Quantum research reduces estimated effort for Bitcoin and Ethereum attacks

An international research team has reduced the estimated computational effort required for a quantum attack on Bitcoin and Ethereum by more than 50 percent. The findings, shared by researchers from the Ethereum Foundation, Theta Labs, StarkWare, and other organizations, suggest that the threshold for such an attack is falling faster than previously anticipated.

The research describes a circuit utilizing 1,151 logical qubits and approximately 1.3 million Toffoli gates. This new estimate of roughly 1.5 billion represents a significant decrease from the 3 billion reference point set by Google Quantum AI in March. Crucially, the researchers noted that this reduction in required effort does not depend on improvements to existing hardware.

The reduction was achieved through a collaborative process involving over 100 participants working on the ECDSA.Fail challenge over eight weeks. Human direction combined with AI agents allowed for over 400 accepted improvements, driving the effort value down. While current hardware remains incapable of cracking these networks, the findings have increased interest in quantum computing stocks like Rigetti as speculative investments.