A quantum computing collective called the Project Eleven has thrown down a public gap into the global cryptography society, and offers a reward of a bitcoin to the first team that can break a deliberately scaled version of Bitcoin’s Elliptic -Curve Cryptography with a genuine quantum dwelling before 5 April.
Announces what it calls ‘q -day prize’ on x, the group wrote: “We just launched the Q -day Prize. 1 BTC to the first team to break a toy version of Bitcoin’s Cryptography with a quantum computer. Deadline: April 5 2026. Mission: Protect 6 M BTC (over $ 500 B).” The item crystallizes a concern that has been hovering over the Bitcoin ecosystem for more than a decade: the possible arrival of large -scale, mis -corrected quantum hardware that can run SHOR’s algorithm against real world keys.
Project The student does not ask the contestant to crush Bitcoins 256 -bit curve directly. Instead, Team has to demonstrate Shor’s algorithm against Elliptics keys Everything from one to twenty -five pieces – sizes called “toy” by professional cryptographers but still size in addition to what has been publicly reached on physical quantum processors. The organizers claim that even a three -piece break would be “big news”, as it would give the first quantitatively verifiable benchmark for quantum progress on elliptical -curve -tr -Llog -Llog problem (ECDLP). With their words, “no one has carefully bench marked this threat yet.”
In order to qualify, a submission must contain gate -level code or explicit instructions that can be run on actual quantum hardware, along with a story about methods used, error speeds handled and the classic finishing required. Hybrid attacks leaning on classic shortcuts are not allowed. All items will be published, a decision that the group framework as an exercise in radical transparency: “Instead of waiting for breakthroughs to happen behind closed doors, we believe in meeting this challenge Head -on, in a transparent and strict manner.”
Why 1 bitcoin – and why now?
Bitcoin’s security ultimately rests on the hardness of the discrete logarithm problem over the SECP256K1 curve. While classic attacks peeling exponentially, Peter Shor’s quantalgorithm from 1994 can basically solve the problem during polynomy time and collapse the cost from cosmic to just Gargantuan. Current research estimates that in the order of two thousand completely mis -corrected logical Qubits – perhaps supported by millions of physical qubits – would be sufficient to threaten a 256 -bit key. Business like GoogleIBM, IONQ and the newcomer Quera compete to cross the four -digit logical -kit threshold, although no one has publicly shown anything close to the capacity today.
Project The student says its price is intended less as a profit and more as a diagnostic. More than ten million bitcoin addresses, which holds over six million coins, have already revealed their public keys through previous expenditure activity. If the quantum technology passes the critical threshold before these coins are migrated to addresses by quantum, the funds would be vulnerable to immediate theft. “Quantum calculation progresses steadily,” warns the group. “When that happens, we must know.”
The initiative lands in the middle of a flur of proposals for quantum resilience within the broader Bitcoin ecosystem. Earlier this month, a group of developers submitted the quantum -resistant address migration protocol (Qramp), a Bitcoin improvement proposal that would orchestrate a network -wide transition to key format after quantum. Since QRAMP would require a consensus -breaking hard fork, its political prospects remain uncertain.
Separately, Canadian Startup BTQ has made exotic proof -A work -work option called rough -grained Boson sampling, which would replace today’s hash -based mining puzzle with photonic sampling tasks performed on quantum hardware. Like QRAMP, BTQ’s concept requires a hard fork and has not yet received broad support.
From a technical point of view, even run a five -bit elliptical curve version of Shor’s algorithm is brutally unforgivable: Qubits with faiths over 99.9 %, coherent for hundreds of microseconds and orchestrated through deep circuits that numbee in thousands of two -white gates would be required. Error correction over the head is further combining the technical burden, which means that challengers will probably need to use the small code’s logical Qubits and impressive compilation techniques just to keep noise under control.
Nevertheless, the award may prove to be irresistible for university laboratories and the companies’ R&D team that is anxious to show practical quantum advantage. Cloud -accessible units from IBM’s quantum system two, Quantinuum’s H -series and OQC’s super -leading platforms allow already limited, payment per -shot access to dozens -or in IBM’s case, hundreds -of physical Qubits. Whether any of these machines can maintain the necessary circuit depth remains to be seen.
Either outcome delivers invaluable data. In the words from Project Eleven Launchstweet, the goal is strong: “Break the largest ECC key with Shor’s algorithm. The reward: 1 BTC + Go down into cryptography history.”
At press time, BTC was about $ 84,771.
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