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Project Eleven, a quantum computing probe and advocacy firm, has launched the Q-Day Prize, a planetary contention offering 1 bitcoin (BTC) to the archetypal squad capable to interruption an elliptic curve cryptographic (ECC) key, the cryptography which secures the Bitcoin network, utilizing Shor’s algorithm connected a quantum computer.
Shor's algorithm is simply a quantum computing method that efficiently factors ample numbers into their premier components, theoretically allowing quantum computers to interruption cryptographic algorithms similar RSA and elliptic-curve cryptography utilized successful Bitcoin and different blockchain networks.
The contention comes arsenic quantum computing advancements mean that a workable quantum machine mightiness lone beryllium years away. Project Elevent has besides identified much than 10 cardinal bitcoin addresses with non-zero balances perchance astatine hazard of quantum attacks.
The Bitcoin assemblage is alert of the quantum computing menace and is moving connected solutions.
As CoinDesk antecedently reported, a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP), titled Quantum-Resistant Address Migration Protocol (QRAMP), was introduced successful aboriginal April, which suggests enforcing a network-wide migration to post-quantum cryptography to safeguard Bitcoin wallets. This would necessitate a hard fork, however, and getting that benignant of statement would beryllium an uphill battle.
Quantum startup BTQ has besides projected its ain solution: a quantum-based alternate to Bitcoin’s Proof of Work called Coarse-Grained Boson Sampling (CGBS).
CGBS works by utilizing quantum computing to make unsocial patterns of photons (light particles called bosons), replacing accepted mining puzzles with quantum-based sampling tasks for validation. But this besides requires a hard fork, and the appetite for specified a alteration isn’t yet known.
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