Project Eleven Offers $84,100 Prize To Test Bitcoin's Quantum Vulnerability

Project Eleven, a quantum computing research firm, has initiated a competition to evaluate Bitcoin's susceptibility to quantum attacks. The "Q-Day Prize" offers 1 Bitcoin, currently valued at approximately $84,100, to the first individual or team that can use a quantum computer to crack the largest portion of a Bitcoin cryptographic key. The competition, announced on April 16, 2025, has a deadline of April 5, 2026. The primary goal is to assess the urgency of the quantum threat to Bitcoin and to stimulate the development of quantum-proof solutions.

Project Eleven highlights that over 10 million Bitcoin addresses with exposed public keys are at risk from quantum computing advances. The firm estimates that more than 6 million Bitcoin, worth around $500 billion, could be compromised if quantum computers become powerful enough to crack elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) keys. The challenge involves running Shor’s algorithm on a quantum computer to break as many bits of a Bitcoin key as possible, demonstrating the potential to scale to a full 256-bit Bitcoin key once sufficient computing power is available. Even cracking a 3-bit key would be considered a significant achievement, as no ECC key used in real-world applications has ever been cracked using quantum methods.

Current quantum computers, such as IBM’s Heron chip with 156 qubits and Google’s Willow with 105 qubits, are far from the power needed to break Bitcoin’s cryptography. Experts estimate that around 2,000 logical qubits (error-corrected) would be sufficient to break a 256-bit ECC key. Project Eleven believes that a 2,000-qubit quantum system could be developed within the next decade, suggesting that while the threat is real, there may still be time to implement solutions. Bitcoin cypherpunk Jameson Lopp recently commented that the industry's concern about quantum computing is currently "unanswerable," noting that while it is far from a crisis, it is worth starting to seriously discuss the issue.

The Bitcoin community is actively working on solutions to mitigate the quantum threat. A Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) titled Quantum-Resistant Address Migration Protocol (QRAMP) was introduced in early April. QRAMP suggests enforcing a network-wide migration to post-quantum cryptography to protect Bitcoin wallets. However, this would require a hard fork, which could be challenging to implement due to the need for community consensus. Another approach comes from quantum startup BTQ, which has proposed a quantum-based alternative to Bitcoin’s Proof of Work called Coarse-Grained Boson Sampling (CGBS). This method uses quantum computing to generate unique patterns of photons, replacing traditional mining puzzles with quantum-based sampling tasks. Like QRAMP, BTQ’s solution would also require a hard fork, and the Bitcoin community’s appetite for such changes remains uncertain.

In February, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino addressed the quantum computing concern, acknowledging the threat is well-founded but expressing confidence that quantum-proof Bitcoin addresses will be implemented well before any "serious threat" emerges. The "Q-Day Prize" competition underscores the growing awareness of quantum computing’s potential impact on cryptocurrency security. By encouraging researchers to test the limits of current quantum technology against Bitcoin’s cryptography, Project Eleven aims to better understand the timeline and urgency of implementing quantum-resistant solutions.