Grayscale, a digital asset manager, has expressed support for accelerating efforts to make public blockchains resistant to quantum computing in a recent research note. The note emphasizes that although technical solutions to achieve quantum resistance already exist, the main challenge lies in getting decentralized communities to agree on implementing these solutions. This comes after Google Quantum AI released a paper highlighting the potential vulnerability of bitcoin's elliptic curve cryptography to quantum attacks, which could be executed with fewer than 500,000 physical qubits.
The study suggests that such an attack could give an attacker a roughly 41% chance of stealing funds before a bitcoin transaction confirms. Grayscale's research note outlines four key takeaways from Google's research, including the unpredictable nature of progress toward a cryptographically relevant quantum computer and the maturity of post-quantum cryptography. The note also highlights the varying levels of quantum risk across different blockchains, depending on factors such as transaction models and consensus mechanisms.
From a technical perspective, Grayscale argues that bitcoin has a lower quantum risk due to its UTXO model, proof-of-work consensus, and lack of native smart contracts. However, the note emphasizes that the main challenge is not technical, but rather governance-related, particularly with regards to the approximately 6.9 million BTC in wallets with permanently exposed public keys, including an estimated 1 million coins believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto. Possible solutions include burning these coins, doing nothing, or slowing their release by limiting the rate of spending from vulnerable addresses. The bitcoin community has a history of contentious debates over protocol changes, which may hinder the implementation of these solutions.