Quantum computing company Project Eleven bounty 1 BTC cracks cryptography: let you know how close the danger is

Quantum computing startup Project Eleven officially launched the "Q-Day Prize" global challenge, awarding 1 bitcoin to the first team that can crack the Bitcoin encryption system with a quantum computer to verify the real threat of quantum computing to blockchain security.

The "Q-Day Prize" is officially launched: challenging the security of Bitcoin Core

Project Eleven, an American quantum computing research company, recently announced the establishment of the first global "Q-Day Prize" award, with a prize of 1 bitcoin ( worth about $84k ), which will be awarded to the first person who successfully uses a quantum computer and the Shor algorithm to crack elliptic curve encryption within a year The team that (ECC) the key.

Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, said: "We don't yet know how close we are to a real quantum apocalyptic scenario."

The challenge is about translating a theoretical threat into a quantifiable and testable model of reality.

This is the first time that a company has incentivized a global research team to challenge Bitcoin's security defense head-on with practical rewards.

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Quantum computing threatens cold rice re-fried, is it difficult to crack?

It is reported that ECC is a public key encryption technology widely used in Bitcoin wallets, TLS network encryption, etc. Its security is based on the elliptic curve discrete logarithmic problem, and the digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) for transaction signing, which is indeed difficult to crack for traditional computers:

However, the Shor algorithm proves that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer can deduce the private key from the public key, solving this problem within a certain period of time, posing a threat to existing encryption systems.

Project Eleven notes that there are currently more than 6.2 million bitcoins ( with a market capitalization of nearly $500 billion ) exposed to that risk.

While there is no quantum computer that can directly breach Bitcoin's SHA-256 hash algorithm, experts generally believe that millions of stable qubits (qubits) are needed to achieve such an attack, and it may take another 5 to 10 years to deal with such an attack.

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Microsoft, Google major breakthroughs, quantum scare or is not far away

Even so, global tech giants such as Google, Amazon and Alibaba have invested in quantum computing and are growing rapidly.

Last December, Google released its first quantum computing chip, Willow; Then, in February this year, the launch of Microsoft Majorana 1 announced that it had achieved an important milestone in the scalability of quantum computing, which is expected to become the prototype of a practical quantum computer in the near future, raising doubts about the future sustainability of the current encryption system.

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However, there are also those who believe that the technology is far from mature, and there are still challenges in thermodynamic limitations, memory requirements, and computational sustainability, so there is no need to worry too much.

Project Eleven: From threat inference to reality verification

Project Eleven shows that the Q-Day Prize is not only a technical challenge, but also a practical test of the state of global encryption security:

Quantum computing is developing rapidly, and the impact on cryptography is inevitable. We should not wait for a breakthrough behind closed doors, but should meet this challenge in a transparent and rigorous manner.

He added, "Through the open competition format, we hope to promote transparency in the progress of quantum computing and provide a basis for future transformation of encryption standards."

This global Bitcoin security trial is not only a technical challenge, but also a real test of the defense of the entire cryptocurrency system.

This article by quantum computing company Project Eleven Bounty 1 BTC Cracking Cryptography: Let You Know How Near the Danger first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.