AI Speeds Up Quantum Attack on Bitcoin and Ethereum

A new study published this week suggests that artificial intelligence (AI) has significantly reduced the cost of launching a quantum attack on Bitcoin and Ethereum. The research, conducted by over 100 researchers from various organizations, including Eigen Labs and the Ethereum Foundation, found that AI agents helped reduce a key benchmark for a quantum attack by 86% in just two months.

The benchmark measures the resources needed to break the cryptography of both cryptocurrencies, which is currently secured using an elliptic curve called secp256k1. The researchers used a competition called ECDSA.Fail to test different circuit designs and measure their performance against Toffoli gates, an expensive type of quantum operation.

The results show that the cost of launching a quantum attack on Bitcoin and Ethereum has decreased from 10.75 billion operations to 1.496 billion operations, which is a significant reduction in just two months. The researchers argue that this finding highlights the need for blockchain security teams to reassess their defensive strategies and timelines, as the threat of quantum attacks may be closer than previously thought.

The Ethereum Foundation has set a deadline of December 2029 to make transactions, validators, and storage on its network quantum-resistant. However, with the rapid progress made in reducing the cost of quantum attacks, it remains to be seen whether this deadline will still hold.