Google Quantum AI has published a whitepaper demonstrating its ability to crack the elliptic curve cryptography protecting most blockchains using 20 times fewer resources than previously estimated.
The team, which includes Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake and Stanford cryptographer Dan Bonnet, declined to release the actual attack circuits. Instead, they published a zero-knowledge proof that allows anyone to verify the claim without knowing how the attack works.
Why did Google hide the code?
Think of a blockchain wallet like a lock. The strength of the lock is based on a mathematical problem called the elliptic curve discrete logarithm problem (ECDLP-256).
Today’s computers would take billions of years to solve it. Quantum computers using Shor’s algorithm can do this in minutes.
Google researchers Assembled Two circles for this attack. One uses less than 1200 logical qubits and 90 million operations. The other uses fewer than 1,450 logical qubits and 70 million operations. Both can operate on less than 500,000 physical qubits.
Previous estimates put the requirements at about 10 million physical qubits. Google just reduced that by a factor of 20.
The team chose to obscure the circles because spreading them out would give attackers an opportunity a plan.
Sharing resource estimates without circuits follows well-established responsible disclosure standards, wrote Ryan Babusch, director of quantum algorithms at Google, and Hartmut Nevin, vice president of Google Quantum AI.
What this means for cryptocurrency holders
The paper warns that Bitcoin (BTC) alone has more than 1.7 million bitcoins held in wallet formats where public keys are already exposed.
This number can reach 2.3 million bitcoins when all types of vulnerable scripts are counted.
Ethereum (ETH), Solana (SOL), and other chains face similar exposure Smart contractsStaking systems and data availability mechanisms.
Google has set a deadline of 2029 for its post-quantum phase Immigration. Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital, described the findings as “serious” and warned that all blockchain networks need transition plans immediately.
Nick Carter, co-founder of Castle Island Ventures, Named The paper is “very realistic”.
The quantum clock is no longer a theory. The question now is whether cryptocurrencies can upgrade their locks before someone builds the key.
“…and the craziest thing is that the Google Quantum AI paper (above) may not even be the most disturbing quantum paper released _today_,” to caution Carter.
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