Dmitriy Gerasimov

🚨 BIG: Google research shows a future quantum computer could crack Bitcoin's private keys in just 9 mins, 1 min short of Bitcoin's average block time. The research warns mempool attacks could become a real threat, urging immediate migration to post-quantum cryptography.

🚨 Google has sounded the quantum alarm 🚨 Today, they released groundbreaking progress towards breaking crypto using a quantum computer. TLDR - Existing cryptography is dead. Mempool attacks are real. We must migrate to post-quantum now. Thread 🧵

Saw some people panicking or asking about quantum computing's impact on crypto. At a high level, all crypto has to do is to upgrade to Quantum-Resistant (Post-Quantum) Algorithms. So, no need to panic. 😂 In practice, there are some execution considerations. It's hard to organize upgrades in a decentralized world. There will likely be many debates on which algorithm(s) to use, resulting in some forks. And some dead project may not upgrade at all. Might be a good to cleanse out those projects anyway. New code may introduce other bugs or security issues in the short term. People who self custody will have to migrate their coins to new wallets. This brings to the question of Satoshi's bitcoins. If those coins move, then it means he/she is still around, which is interesting to know. If they don't move (in a certain period of time), it might be better to lock (or effectively burn) those addresses so that they don't go to the first hacker who cracks it. There is also the difficulty of identifying all his addresses, and not confuse with some old hodlers. Anyway, it's a different topic for later. Fundamentally: It's always easier to encrypt than decrypt. More computing power is always good. Crypto will stay, post quantum.

This is wild. Google Research demonstrates a ~20x more efficient implementation of Shor's algorithm that could break ECDSA keys within minutes with ~500K physical qubits. Google is now are more confident on a 2029 post-quantum transition. We are no longer looking at mid 2030s, we could have quantum computers of this scale by the end of the decade. They believe this result is so severe that they are not publishing the actual circuits. They instead published a ZKP proving that they know of the quantum circuit with these properties. This is very atypical, showing Google thinks this is serious shit. All blockchains need a transition plan ASAP. Post-quantum is no longer a drill.

🚨 Google has sounded the quantum alarm 🚨 Today, they released groundbreaking progress towards breaking crypto using a quantum computer. TLDR - Existing cryptography is dead. Mempool attacks are real. We must migrate to post-quantum now. Thread 🧵