Project Eleven Awards 1 BTC Q-Day Prize for Largest Quantum Attack on Elliptic Curve Cryptography to Date
Researcher breaks 15-bit ECC key on publicly accessible quantum hardware in a 512x jump from the previous public demonstration.
Project Eleven today awarded the Q-Day…
“The news here is that there is progress being made,” Pruden said. “It’s not the case that nothing has happened in quantum, and this is proof of that.”
The winning attack used a machine with about 70 qubits—quantum bits that can exist in multiple states at once, unlike the binary bits used in traditional computers—and ran in minutes once developed, according to Pruden. He said the submission was reviewed by a panel of quantum researchers from academia and industry, including researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and quantum software company qBraid.
The announcement comes as major quantum firms and research institutions publish increasingly aggressive hardware roadmaps and nearer estimates for breaking modern cryptography.
“Our own prediction for Q-Day is 2029 in the worst case,” Pruden said. “I think that’s because you really can’t know with certainty how clever people are and how quickly these technological breakthroughs happen.”
When that breakthrough happens, Project Eleven said roughly 6.9 million Bitcoin are sitting in wallets with public keys visible on-chain that could become vulnerable if large-scale quantum computers emerge.
“A key part of quantum computing at scale is error correction,” Pruden said. “AI can help make that process way more efficient.”
