Project Eleven Launches Q-Day Prize for Breaking Bitcoin’s ECC Key
Project Eleven has launched the Q-Day Prize, offering 1 bitcoin for breaking an elliptic curve cryptographic key using Shor’s algorithm on a quantum computer. This reflects growing concerns over quantum computing's potential to compromise current cryptographic systems.
- Shor's algorithm could enable quantum computers to break ECC, securing Bitcoin and other blockchain networks.
- Advancements in quantum computing indicate that a functional quantum computer may be near.
- Over 10 million Bitcoin addresses with non-zero balances are identified as potentially vulnerable to quantum attacks.
- The Bitcoin community is exploring solutions, including a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) for post-quantum cryptography, requiring a hard fork.
- BTQ has proposed Coarse-Grained Boson Sampling (CGBS) as a quantum alternative to Bitcoin's Proof of Work, also necessitating a hard fork.