Lately, Venture Eleven (a quantum computing analysis group) introduced a 1 bitcoin reward for the primary staff capable of full a problem to exhibit breaking a ECC (elliptic curve cryptograph) key utilizing Shor’s algorithm on a quantum laptop.
The deadline for this problem is April fifth, 2026, which means with the intention to qualify for the prize a staff should exhibit breaking a key pair it have to be executed earlier than that deadline.
That is frankly a totally absurd and meaningless prize for a variety of causes, the primary of which is the deadline of just below a 12 months from immediately. Even extremely optimistic projections concerning the progress of quantum computing put the timeline of virtually reaching such a aim at extra like 5-10 years. Anticipating a workable proof of idea demonstration that really breaks a keypair in a single 12 months is fairly laughable at face worth, even in the event you do view quantum computing as a fabric menace within the brief time period.
Subsequent is the issue of financial incentives. A single bitcoin is at present value roughly $80,000. That’s frankly not some huge cash within the grand scheme of issues. Particularly in the case of the appliance of a leading edge expertise like quantum computing that may carry out a complete class of computation exponentially quicker than a classical laptop. Think about how rather more helpful issues could possibly be executed with a working quantum laptop.
You possibly can listen in on web connections no matter TLS, breaking safe connections to banks, fairness brokerages, personal company networks not utilizing post-quantum cryptography. You possibly can break each personal messenger software on the planet, you would decrypt any PGP encrypted message despatched over e-mail that you simply knew the general public key for. You possibly can break all the DNS system’s certificates authority hierarchy, permitting you to impersonate any server on the planet a consumer tries to hook up with.
All of this stuff have immeasurable worth past only a mere $84,000. Why on Earth would somebody with a working quantum laptop publicly reveal that reality to say a single bitcoin once they might make the most of all these different issues they’d be able to doing?
Okay, let’s sweep all of these potentialities apart and faux all the world magically migrates to post-quantum cryptography other than Bitcoin. It nonetheless is not sensible to attempt to publicly declare this prize in case you have a purposeful quantum laptop.
Let’s assume you’ve gotten a barely performant sufficient quantum laptop, that it takes a good period of time to crack a single key. What number of naked public keys are there securing 50 BTC outputs from the primary mining epoch? THOUSANDS of them. Why on Earth would you crack one, after which go inform everybody publicly to say a single bitcoin? You’ll simply attempt to crack as lots of these early coinbase rewards as potential earlier than individuals detected you.
Lastly, the timetable by itself is simply absurd. Quantum computer systems at present will not be even able to factoring prime numbers that folks can do themselves of their heads mentally. In a single 12 months the expertise goes to leap from that to cracking Bitcoin keys? That’s absurd.
So what the hell is the purpose of this prize besides some publicity stunt? It’s totally meaningless as a critical bounty to operate as a canary within the coalmine for us, irrespective of how involved or unconcerned you might be with the timeframes of quantum computer systems as a menace.
This bounty is a joke.
This text is a Take. Opinions expressed are completely the creator’s and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.