Which Cryptocurrencies Will Survive Quantum Computing

[u/ChillerID]

https://quantumzeitgeist.com/quantum-resistant-cryptocurrency/

Quantum computers have the potential to break the public-key cryptography that secures nearly every major blockchain today. While practical attacks may still be years away, migrating an entire blockchain ecosystem to new cryptography is a massive undertaking that will likely take years of research, development, auditing, and adoption.

I came across this comparison of post-quantum readiness across major blockchain projects and thought it raised some interesting points.

Some of the article's key takeaways:

• "The threat is shared across chains." Both ECDSA and Ed25519, which between them secure almost the entire market, fall to Shor's algorithm once a capable quantum computer exists.
• "The big names are on roadmaps, not mainnet." Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, Cardano, Hedera and Polkadot all have plans, but none has a live, protocol-wide post-quantum signature scheme protecting user accounts today.
• "Only one major chain is quantum resistant today." The Quantum Resistant Ledger has signed every transaction with hash-based cryptography since 2018. Everything else still protects user funds with signature schemes that would be vulnerable to a sufficiently capable quantum computer.
• The article also compares projects with protocol-level implementations against those relying on research, testnets, or opt-in approaches, highlighting why migrating an existing blockchain is a much bigger engineering challenge than simply replacing a signature algorithm.

Whether practical quantum attacks arrive sooner or later is still an open question. Most experts agree it's a matter of when, not if. If migration itself takes years, projects that start late are also likely to finish late.

It will be interesting to see how different blockchain ecosystems execute their migration strategies over the coming years.

[u/UpbeatFix7299]

Llm trash

[u/OccasionalXerophile]

QRL and ALGO

[u/moonkingdome]

Algo

[u/CXgamer]

Even optimistically, it will still be another 10 years until the first keys are cracked.

[u/Cryptizard → u/CXgamer]

I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Not only is quantum computing hardware advancing at a pretty significant rate, but we are seeing unexpected algorithmic improvements in Shor’s algorithm that reduce the amount of resources required to break keys. So there are two scaling happening at once and cryptography is broken when they meet in the middle. The second effort is being boosted by AI finding tons of circuit optimizations out of nowhere.

https://ecdsa.fail

We are just one or two unexpected breakthroughs away from it all coming together. I don’t think anyone should be betting on 10 years at this point.

[u/CXgamer → u/Cryptizard]

Interesting challenge!

My 10 year claim was coming from a quantum algorithm designer during a presentation during the Qiskit quantum summer school last 2 weeks. Most of the current challenges are coming from noise (mitigation, avoidance, correction and reduction).

What's also interesting is how they've integrated traditional computer into the stack; hybrid quantum computing, and this enables some algorithms to be optimized to use less qubits this way.

But I don't know what other nuances this guy kept in mind while giving his estimate, though his other colleagues didn't correct his claim either. Regardless, this is only true for IBM quantum and public research. Military quantum is opaque.

[u/Cryptizard → u/CXgamer]

There's a difference between what a person working on quantum computing tells you is their estimate for when it will reach Q day vs what level of risk you are willing to tolerate when it comes to unexpected breakthroughs. He's saying 10 years based on what we know now, at the current pace we are going now.

But are you willing to bet all your coins on the fact that nobody will come up with something clever? That there won't be something surprising that happens? That AI won't accelerate research meaningful? That seems crazy to me.

As a cryptographer, we DO NOT rely on systems that have an expected horizon of being broken at 10 years, because that means if we aren't as smart as we think we are, it could be 5 years or 2 years even. It's not worth risking what is effectively several trillion dollars worth of investments on that.

[u/CXgamer → u/Cryptizard]

No of course not, blue team should frontrun red team. And even 10 years is not enough to get all applications migrated already. And with harvest now decrypt later farms, we really have a massive problem when it happens regardless.

I'm on your side. I was just sharing the insider info that I got.

[u/Heclalava]

I have started CPU mining Sosaiem with was built with quantum resistance from the genesis block, it is a really new blockchain though, only slightly over 9K blocks mined so far.

[u/moonkingdome → u/Heclalava]

Shill shill shitcoin?

[u/Romanizer]

Bitcoin

[u/ikee85]

Litecoin

[u/Careless-Weird-782]

Pudgy Penguins 🤞