Researchers Cut Estimated Resources for Future Quantum Attack on Bitcoin, Ethereum by Half

Researchers from the Ethereum Foundation, Theta Labs, StarkWare and other organizations have developed a quantum circuit design that reduces the estimated computational resources needed for a key step in a theoretical quantum attack on Bitcoin and Ethereum by more than 50% compared to a benchmark Google published in March. The new design uses 1,151 logical qubits and roughly 1.3 million logic gates, producing a combined efficiency score well below Google’s earlier figure.

Crowdsourced Effort Combined Human and AI Contributions

The improvement came from an eight week open research challenge involving more than 100 participants working alongside AI coding agents, producing over 400 accepted submissions that built on each other’s progress. According to the researchers, AI tools handled much of the implementation and testing work, while humans primarily guided research direction and made larger structural changes to the design. The specific calculation optimized, known as point addition, is a core step repeated throughout the quantum algorithm that could eventually be used to derive private keys from exposed public keys.

No Immediate Threat, But Timeline Concerns Persist

The researchers emphasized that their work covers only one component of a full attack and excludes factors like physical error correction, meaning no existing quantum computer could use the result to break Bitcoin or Ethereum today.

Later refinements included in the research pushed the efficiency score even lower. The lead author noted that while an attack isn’t imminent, the urgency stems from the fact that cryptographic remedies take years to implement and cannot be applied retroactively. The findings come as the US government has also begun funding quantum hardware development through recent grants to major quantum computing firms.