Quantum Attack Estimates Plummet for Bitcoin and Ethereum
A group of researchers has made significant progress in reducing the estimated computational complexity for a potential future quantum attack on Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The study, which involved over 100 specialists and AI agents, optimized the elliptic curve point addition operation in Shor's algorithm. This key stage of the attack uses 1151 logical qubits and approximately 1.3 million Toffoli gates.
The researchers were able to halve the estimated quantum cost of this operation, reducing it from 3 billion to 1.5 billion arbitrary units. However, they note that the comparison is not entirely accurate due to differences in interfaces and accounting rules.
The study's findings are significant because they show that improving algorithms and software optimizations can also reduce hardware requirements for quantum attacks.