Can Bitcoin be protected against future quantum attacks?

On December 10, Google officially announced a major technology news:

Its latest quantum computer "Willow" has achieved two important achievements:

- Willow can reduce errors exponentially when using more quantum bits (with 105 physical quantum bits), cracking the quantum error correction challenge that has been studied for nearly 30 years.

- Willow can complete a standard benchmark calculation in less than 5 minutes, while the fastest supercomputer today needs 10^25 (100000000000000000000000000) years to complete this calculation, which is longer than the age of the universe.

This is a major progress made by Google in quantum computing.

However, Google also admitted in the news: quantum computers that can be actually used in commercial scenarios may not appear before 2030.

Quantum computing is also one of the most cutting-edge research fields in information technology.

In our crypto ecosystem, many readers have heard about quantum computing to some extent, because it poses a major threat to the encryption algorithm, the cornerstone of blockchain technology. In more popular terms, quantum computers can theoretically crack the encryption algorithm used in blockchain technology.

Seeing Google's achievements in quantum computing, many people, including many traditional self-media on the Internet, have begun to claim:

Bitcoin is about to end.

There are two articles on the Internet that answer this question very well. Of course, some of the data in them are questionable in my opinion, but when taken together, some of the core points of these two articles are still to the point.

The links to the two articles are attached at the end of the article. Below I will excerpt two paragraphs of the core points of these two articles.

1. From the perspective of computing power and commercial use, the current quantum computers are still a long way from threatening crypto assets

The Willow quantum computer currently has 105 quantum bits. However, Kevin Rose, a former senior product manager at Google, pointed out that "cracking Bitcoin encryption requires a quantum computer with about 13 million qubits to complete decryption within 24 hours."

So from the perspective of computing power alone, the number of qubits required to crack Bitcoin's encryption algorithm is more than 100,000 times that of Willow.

In addition, even if the computing power is achieved, Google itself estimates that it is unlikely to realize the commercial use of quantum computers before 2030.

This breaks the saying that "Bitcoin is going to die" from the perspectives of computing power and commercial use.

2. The application of crypto assets has already taken precautions against quantum attacks

Let's take Bitcoin as an example.

If we only use a receiving address once, the risk of being attacked will be greatly reduced. Now many Bitcoin wallets have adopted this method: only use a receiving address once.

In addition, if we use the address of isolated witness to receive Bitcoin, the risk of being attacked by quantum can also be reduced.

Finally, Bitcoin's encryption algorithm itself has been evolving, and new quantum-resistant algorithms can be introduced in the future.

The Ethereum ecosystem has also been prepared in this regard. Vitalik has proposed a hard fork of Ethereum to introduce an algorithm that resists quantum attacks.

So in the crypto ecosystem itself, many projects have already taken precautions against quantum attacks.

Therefore, if we who are deeply involved in the crypto ecosystem can look at this issue objectively, we don't need to worry too much.

This topic is discussed every once in a while, and each time it is discussed, it is a popular science event, and each time popular science event will allow more and more people to understand the real situation.

So we should still focus more on the progress of the encryption ecosystem, and not be disturbed by too many external noises that do not know the truth.

Reference link:

https://www.techflowpost.com/article/detail_22190.html

https://x.com/jeffrey_hu/status/1866689266237182370