As quantum computing researchers celebrate breakthrough after breakthrough, Web3’s $4-trillion asset base faces a ticking time bomb. Last December, Google announced that their quantum Willow chip performed a computation in less than five minutes that would have taken a state-of-the-art super computer ten septillion years (about 100 trillion times longer than our universe is old). Drug discovery, materials science, financial modeling, and optimization problems of all kinds will enter a golden age thanks to quantum. But most modern encryption, which relies on math puzzles that are functionally impossible for a classical computer to solve, could be cracked instantly by quantum.
In Web3, adversaries are already collecting encrypted blockchain data to crack later, when quantum comes of age. An investment in crypto is, in essence, an investment in the integrity of cryptography, which quantum computing directly threatens.
Fortunately, researchers have demonstrated that specialized zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography can help quantum-proof the industry’s most valuable blockchains, ensuring Web3 can reap the benefits of quantum — from new antibiotics to hyper-optimized supply chains — while insulating it from the dangers.
The quantum advantage
On Oct. 22, Google published verifiable results in Nature demonstrating its quantum chip is “useful in learning the structure of systems in nature, from molecules to magnets to black holes, [running] 13,000 times faster than the best classical algorithm on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.” What’s astonishing about these results is they were not based on a contrived benchmark, like the earlier example, but on applied problems with direct scientific benefits.
Despite quantum’s evident bounty to human knowledge, it poses an undeniable threat to cryptography in general and the nearly $4-trillion digital asset base in particular. The Human Rights Foundation published a report showing over six million BTC are in early, “quantum vulnerable” account types, including Satoshi’s dormant 1.1 million BTC. These will likely be the first “Q Day” (the day when quantum becomes powerful enough to break public-key encryption) casualties.
Both Ethereum and Bitcoin rely on Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), which is famously vulnerable to “Shor’s algorithm,” a quantum algorithm designed in the 1990s for rapidly calculating the prime factors of large integers, a problem otherwise completely intractable for classical computers. It’s even theoretically possible that quantum has already broken Bitcoin; we just haven’t realized it yet.
