Elon Musk endorsed a physics theory capping quantum computers near 400 qubits, and Bitcoin (BTC) traders read it as proof the 835 qubits needed to break the network are unreachable. Key Points: - Musk endorsed a discrete-universe theory that caps usable qubits near 400, without mentioning Bitcoin. - Breaking Bitcoin's signatures takes an estimated 835 logical qubits, down from earlier published figures. - IBM targets 200 logical qubits by 2029, leaving both the physics claim and the attack estimate untested. Elon Musk Backs Palmer Quantum Qubit Ceiling Musk replied on Aug. 29 to an Institute of Art and Ideas post about the work of Oxford physicist Tim Palmer, writing that the universe is integer in units of Planck cubes. The post had gone up a day earlier. He said nothing about private keys, digital signatures or the Bitcoin network, and his comment addressed physics rather than cryptography. Investor Fred Krueger picked up the exchange the next day and argued that Bitcoin may already be quantum-safe, because current estimates put the attack requirement at 835 logical qubits. Krueger added that Musk and venture investor Steve Jurvetson had both commented favorably on the research. Palmer is a Royal Society fellow elected in 2003 who spent his career building weather forecasting models at Oxford. His paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March, swaps the smooth mathematics behind quantum theory for a discrete structure. It estimates a usable ceiling of roughly 200 to 400 qubits on current hardware and no more than 1,000 under any design. Also Read: Solana Faces $110 Test After Major Whales Add Fresh Demand Bitcoin Signature Attack Estimates Keep Falling A July paper by Han Luo and seven co-authors cut the logical qubit count for attacking Bitcoin's signature curve to 835, the lowest figure
Aug 31, 2026 · via yellow.com
Quantum-safe free-space connectivity? Still waiting for optical fiber at your home? For private households, this is an inconvenience. For critical infrastructure and cybersecure networks, it’s a make-or-break resource. Free-space optical QKD enables connectivity at sites and between platforms where fiber deployment is impractical or impossible—like connectivity with mobile users of critical infrastructures, across campuses, harbors, industrial areas, and temporary ad hoc networks. The critical part is to take free-space QKD out of the laboratory. Our latest demonstration shows how it can be integrated into a practical wireless communication stack, with encryption, broadband data transport, and monitoring working together. Why QKD? Classical public-key cryptography relies on mathematical problems that are difficult for today’s computers. Powerful quantum computers threaten widely used cryptographic methods. QKD takes another path by distributing keys using quantum states of light, so eavesdropping changes the physical system and can be detected. Properly implemented QKD provides security grounded in physics rather than computational assumptions. It doesn’t replace every security tool, but rather belongs in a hybrid future with post-quantum cryptography, classical symmetric encryption, and authentication to allow future cybersecurity certification. The goal is defense in depth for data that must remain confidential for many years. QKD on optical free-space channels KEEQuant adapted its commercial continuous-variable (CV) QKD devices for operation on optical free-space channels. This includes the optical coupling of a telecom-band CV-QKD signal into a free-space link, development of hardware and software interfaces for integration with key management, encryption applications, and network-management functions. This is relevant for security-critical environments because the result isn’t an isolated QKD experiment but rather a route toward deployable key delivery over line-of-sight links. This achievement was demonstrated during a recent German research project called QuINSiDa, which involved six partners from academia and industry. The consortium set out to answer a practical question: What
Aug 31, 2026 · via laserfocusworld.com
Inside China's Pioneering Quantum-Powered Demonstration Substation Discover how China's Houdian demonstration substation in Hefei integrates cutting-edge quantum technologies to enhance power grid safety, efficiency, and cybersecurity. Par Xu Jing, People's Daily Quantum technology is beginning to transform the way China's power grids operate. At the 220-kilovolt Houdian Quantum Application Demonstration Substation in Hefei, east China's Anhui province, a suite of advanced quantum technologies is now in use. These include diamond-based quantum sensing materials to monitor current fluctuations, quantum-dot gas sensors to detect potential cable fire hazards and partial discharge faults inside switchgear, and other innovations that strengthen the intelligence, safety, and efficiency of grid operations. Commissioned in November 2024, the facility is China's first demonstration substation dedicated to the systematic application of quantum technologies. It has deployed 85 independently developed quantum devices across 18 categories, covering quantum sensing, quantum communication, and quantum computing. The project represents a pioneering effort to integrate quantum technologies into power grid engineering, offering a new technological solution to the challenges faced by conventional power grids while supporting the development of a new-type power system. The substation also represents a new generation of fully unattended intelligent substations. "We have replaced many manual inspection tasks with high-precision quantum sensing equipment," said Tian Teng, a young engineer at the digitalization institute of the electric power research institute under State Grid Anhui Electric Power Co., Ltd. "The new system can identify and diagnose equipment defects much faster, reducing both inspection costs and operating expenses." Inside the high-voltage switchgear hall, rows of power equipment operated steadily. Standing beside an out-of-service switchgear cabinet, Tian pointed to a small device mounted on its side. "This is a quantum-dot multi-parameter sensor," he explained. "It continuously monitors the cabinet's internal environment and detects signals associated with partial electrical discharge, enabling us to assess the
Aug 31, 2026 · via alwihdainfo.com
Edward Farhi invented two of the most-studied algorithms in quantum computing. Both aim at optimisation, which is also the application the industry most often promises. He built the quantum adiabatic algorithm in 2000 and QAOA in 2014. Between them they shaped how the field thinks about hard combinatorial problems. What makes Farhi the right person to profile is not just that he built these tools, but that he has been among the clearest voices on their limits. He came to quantum computing after a full career in particle physics, and he brought with him a physicist’s insistence on knowing exactly what has been proved and what has merely been hoped. On the question the whole field turns on, whether quantum optimisation actually beats the best classical methods, the inventor of the leading algorithm is notably careful. Farhi built two landmark quantum algorithms. The adiabatic algorithm came in 2000 and QAOA in 2014. Both aim at approximate optimisation, the application quantum computing most often promises. He came from particle physics. As a student he introduced thrust as a QCD observable, a variable still used at the Large Hadron Collider, and he co-created the Farhi-Susskind technicolor model before turning to quantum computing. The adiabatic algorithm computes by staying in the ground state. Start in an easy state, deform the problem slowly, and the answer is where you end up, provided the change is slow enough. QAOA is its near-term cousin. It chops the smooth adiabatic evolution into a few tunable layers a noisy gate machine can run, which is why it is the most-run optimisation algorithm on real hardware. Neither has a proven advantage. Whether quantum optimisation beats the best classical methods on a useful problem remains open, and Farhi’s own group has published some of the sharpest results on where it
Aug 31, 2026 · via quantumzeitgeist.com
Quantum Computing Myths and Reality Few technologies are surrounded by as much confusion as this one. Here are ten of the most common quantum computing myths, set against what the science and the engineering actually show. A quantum computer will not replace your laptop. It is a specialised accelerator for a narrow class of problems. For everything you do today, a classical machine is faster and cheaper. It does not try every answer at once. Superposition is not parallel search. Interference has to cancel the wrong answers, and designing that cancellation is the whole difficulty of a quantum algorithm. Encryption is not falling this year. The best current estimate for breaking RSA-2048 is under a million noisy qubits, and no machine has more than about twelve hundred. The risk that matters is data stolen today and decrypted later. More qubits does not mean a better machine. Error rate, connectivity and coherence time decide what a chip can run. A noisy thousand-qubit device can be less useful than a clean fifty-qubit one. Quantum supremacy was never a claim of usefulness. It means a machine did something a classical computer finds hard, on a task chosen to be hard. None has yet solved a problem anyone needed solved. Entanglement cannot send a message. The two sets of results match when you compare them, and comparing them needs an ordinary channel. No-signalling is a theorem, not an engineering limit. Quantum computing myths travel faster than the research that should correct them, because the subject is genuinely strange and the headlines reward drama over nuance. A field that deals in superposition and entanglement is easy to dress up as magic, and easy to dismiss as a con, and both reactions miss what is really happening. The truth sits in a less excitable middle, where
Aug 31, 2026 · via quantumzeitgeist.com
NISQ stands for Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum, and it is the name for the era of quantum computing we are living in right now. A NISQ machine has enough qubits to be interesting, too many for a classical computer to easily imitate, but no error correction, so noise limits what it can reliably do. The term captures both the promise and the frustration of today’s hardware. This guide explains where the term came from and why the word noisy is the whole point. It covers what these machines are actually good for, the two structural problems that cap them, and why the field now treats NISQ as a stepping stone. Understanding it is the quickest way to close the gap between quantum computing headlines and reality. NISQ means noisy and uncorrected. The defining feature is the absence of error correction, so accumulated noise caps how deep a circuit can run. It is an era, not a machine type. The term describes a stage that spans every hardware platform, from superconducting to trapped ions. Intermediate scale is about size. Preskill’s paper points to roughly fifty to a few hundred qubits, too many for brute-force simulation but far too few for fault tolerance. Its signature is hybrid algorithms. Variational methods that pair a shallow quantum circuit with a classical optimiser are the workhorses of the NISQ era. Two walls cap it. Barren plateaus make training exponentially harder as qubit counts rise, and the number of measurement shots needed for useful precision is brutal. The field is moving past it. The goal now is early error correction, with recent results showing that correction can finally beat the noise it introduces. Noisy, intermediate-scale, and with no error correction The letters spell out the two defining traits of today’s machines. Noisy means the qubits and the
Aug 31, 2026 · via quantumzeitgeist.com
David E. Shaw is usually introduced as the billionaire who built one of the most secretive quantitative hedge funds on Wall Street. That description is accurate and it buries the more interesting fact, which is that he left the firm bearing his name to go back to building computers. The through line across four decades is unusually consistent. Shaw has spent his career arguing that if you care enough about one specific calculation, you should stop buying general-purpose computers and design silicon shaped around that calculation instead. He made that argument as a young academic in the 1980s, he applied it to securities markets in between, and he has spent the years since building machines that simulate molecules faster than anything else on Earth. The hedge fund was the detour, not the destination. Shaw was building custom parallel hardware at Columbia before Wall Street and returned to building custom parallel hardware afterwards. The finance years funded the machine. Anton is the argument for special-purpose silicon, made in hardware. By spending every transistor on one calculation, it reached simulation timescales that general-purpose machines could not approach. He hired Jeff Bezos, who left to start Amazon. Bezos joined D. E. Shaw & Co in 1990, became its youngest senior vice president in 1992, and left in 1994 with an idea about selling books online. Anton solves the half of chemistry that quantum computers do not. It runs classical molecular dynamics at enormous scale, treating the quantum behaviour of electrons as an approximation baked into a force field. That makes Anton the benchmark quantum chemistry has to beat. Claims that a quantum computer will transform drug discovery are competing against a machine that already exists and already works. The architectural lesson transfers directly. A quantum processor is another bet that a device built
Aug 31, 2026 · via quantumzeitgeist.com
QuEra Computing, a developer of neutral-atom quantum computers, announced on August 27, 2026, that it used Anthropic's Claude to develop laser recovery and tuning logic. The resulting recovery controller returned lasers to their target frequency in 695 out of 700 trials, a 99.3% success rate. But the notable shift here isn't that AI now continuously operates the quantum computer. It's that the knowledge Claude gained through trial and error on real hardware has been sealed into ordinary, inspectable code. Lasers serve as the hands and feet of a neutral-atom machine. In QuEra's system, optical tweezers capture atoms, a separate laser manipulates their quantum states, and light readout ultimately yields computation results. According to Anthropic, the lasers involved here require frequency precision on the order of one part in a trillion. Temperature shifts, vibration, or air pressure changes can knock the system out of "lock," preventing correct operations from reaching the qubits. The task at hand was to compress a rare failure recovery process that human experts once handled in five to ten minutes down to a matter of seconds. Claude builds it, but ordinary code runs it What QuEra handed to Claude wasn't the entire customer-facing quantum computer, but a dedicated laser testbed worth roughly $700,000. The AI didn't operate inside the microsecond-scale servo loop itself; instead, it worked from a level above, reading equipment states and adjusting control values. Humans predefined the operating range and success criteria: the relock had to succeed on the first attempt and hold for 30 seconds. The development loop was split into four roles: one Claude instance proposed new recovery hypotheses, another fixed the code, a third ran tests on real hardware and logged every operation, and a fourth decided the next change based on the logs. Each used a fresh instance, and by
Aug 31, 2026 · via xenospectrum.com
Elon Musk Backs the Physics Behind a Claim Quantum Computers Can't Break Bitcoin
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Aug 30, 2026 · via cryptonews.net
How Singapore turns billion-dollar science research into real-world success - Singapore’s RIE plans have driven innovation in industries like marine manufacturing, with Mencast Marine adopting AI and 3D printing to boost productivity and reduce carbon footprint. - Horizon Quantum, a local deep tech startup, developed tools to simplify quantum computing, secured funding, and launched Singapore’s first commercial quantum computer for hire. - PRECISE and PREPARE initiatives advance precision medicine and epidemic preparedness, mapping genomes and creating respiratory tissue models to improve healthcare and future outbreak responses. AI generated SINGAPORE – Singapore launched its first Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) roadmap in 2010, supported by a budget of $16.1 billion, to outline the nation's priorities in research and technology. It has been 15 years since that initial launch. In 2026, the National Research Foundation is expected to publish its RIE2025 report to document the country’s progress over the most recent five-year period from April 2021 to March 2026. NRF will also release its full RIE2030 plan to set out goals and priorities for the next five years with a new budget of $37 billion. The Straits Times recaps some of the success stories that emerged from Singapore’s RIE efforts. Mencast Marine Founded in 1981 as a four-man operation designing and manufacturing propellers for tugboats and fast-boats, Mencast Marine’s production process depended on raw materials such as sand and bronze alloy ingots, imported from as far away as Europe. The propellers, typically between 1m and 3m in diameter, are made by melting the ingots into sand moulds in a process known as sand casting. It has also relied on engineers for its labour-intensive production process. In 2023, the home-grown firm tapped Singapore’s research ecosystem, partnering Enterprise Singapore and A*STAR to incorporate artificial intelligence and additive manufacturing – more commonly known as 3D-printing
Aug 30, 2026 · via straitstimes.com
French quantum startup Quobly raises $134M led by Bpifrance and STMicroelectronics
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French quantum computing startup Quobly has raised €115 million ($133.72 million) in a funding round led by state-backed investment bank Bpifrance, chipmaker STMicroelectronics, and Sealsq. The funding follows recent public investments in quantum computing, including France's €1 billion commitment and the US administration's $2 billion announcement.
Quobly aims to produce affordable, reliable quantum computers using modified transistors similar to conventional chips. CEO Maud Vinet said this approach will make their quantum computers 100 times cheaper than competing technologies. The company is collaborating with STMicroelectronics for chip manufacturing, with a team of around 15 people working inside the chipmaker's facilities.
Quobly plans to offer cloud-based access to its first systems from its Grenoble headquarters later this year. Other investors include the European Innovation Council, Blast, Air Liquide Venture Capital, and existing investor Innovacom.
Source: stockopedia.com
Aug 30, 2026 · via app.dealroom.co
Week in review: first quantum‑resistant Bitcoin transaction and Solana inflation decision Bitcoin dips after Fed remarks; StarkWare tests quantum-safe TX; Solana backs lower inflation. Bitcoin slipped to $78,000 after the Fed chief’s remarks, StarkWare executed the first quantum‑resistant transaction on the Bitcoin network, the Solana community backed cutting SOL inflation, and other highlights from the week. Bitcoin rebounds above $78,000 Throughout the week, the first cryptocurrency tried to test $81,000. On Binance, the price briefly reached $81,354. However, on Friday, following remarks by Fed chair Kevin Warsh, the price fell below $76,000. The head of the regulator reaffirmed the 2% inflation target. He said the weak summer data do not yet signal a meaningful improvement in the underlying trend. After Warsh’s speech, traders revised expectations for the Fed’s September meeting — the probability of a rate hike rose in a day from 35.4% to 57%. At the time of writing, bitcoin had recovered and approached $79,000, up more than 1.5% over 24 hours and holding a weekly gain of nearly 2%. Among the largest altcoins by market cap, Solana (+12.4%) and HYPE from Hyperliquid (+4.3%) notably outperformed. XRP fell ~7.5% over the week to $1.4. Inflows into spot bitcoin-ETF products slowed: they attracted about ~$934.5 million for the week versus $1.92 billion the week before. On Friday, investors pulled nearly $202 million, ending a nine‑day streak of daily net inflows. Ethereum funds saw $824.4 million of inflows, up from $697.2 million the previous week. The most recent daily net outflow from ETH ETFs was recorded on August 11. The crypto Fear and Greed Index jumped to a local high of 74 early in the week. It then pulled back to 69, remaining near the extreme greed zone. The digital asset market capitalization rose from $2.62 trillion to $2.66 trillion. Bitcoin’s
Aug 30, 2026 · via forklog.com
Ripple Prepares XRP Ledger For A Future Quantum Threat Ripple released a roadmap whose role is to make the XRP Ledger compatible with post-quantum signatures by 2028. Indeed, the project plans tests, a coexistence period between the old and new systems, as well as a global network migration. However, this protection is not yet activated on the main network. No computer is yet capable of calculating the private keys used to control XRP accounts. In brief - Ripple prepares the XRP Ledger for post-quantum signatures by 2028. - The migration will follow four phases, from testing to global network transition. - Key rotation will facilitate the switch to new signature systems. - Validators will have to approve the integration of post-quantum protections. - Network performance and algorithm security remain at the core of tests. Ripple organizes the XRP Ledger migration in four phases While network activity explodes, Ayo Akinyele, Senior Director of Engineering at Ripple, explained in detail this strategy. For him, the company wants to prepare the infrastructure before quantum computers become an immediate threat. The risk fundamentally rests on elliptic curve-based signatures. The XRP Ledger currently uses the secp256k1 and Ed25519 algorithms. Thus, a very powerful quantum computer would theoretically exploit a public key to find the equivalent private key. Then, it would sign transactions instead of the owner. Here are the key steps of this program : - The first phase provides an emergency procedure in case of sudden breakdown of current cryptography ; - The second evaluates risks, post-quantum algorithms, and their performance consequences ; - The third phase must make current and post-quantum signatures coexist on test networks ; - The fourth aims for a general transition of the XRP Ledger by 2028 at the latest. This guidance document was originally published by Ripple in
Aug 30, 2026 · via cointribune.com
Ripple is preparing the XRP Ledger for a future in which quantum computers could become powerful enough to threaten the cryptography securing blockchain wallets and transactions. The company has outlined a multi-stage roadmap designed to make XRPL fully post-quantum ready by 2028, while also building an emergency migration path in case advances arrive faster than expected. The plan does not mean XRP is facing an immediate security crisis. Instead, Ripple is treating quantum resistance as a long-term infrastructure upgrade that needs to begin before the threat becomes practical. That distinction matters as XRPL becomes increasingly important for payments and tokenized assets. The network recently surpassed 5 billion transactions, while activity around real-world assets has also accelerated, making future cryptographic resilience more relevant as more value moves on-chain XRPL growth. What Happens on “Q-Day”? “Q-Day” is shorthand for the point when a sufficiently capable quantum computer could defeat widely used public-key cryptography. In theory, that could allow an attacker to derive private keys from exposed public information and gain control over digital assets. The issue extends well beyond XRP: Bitcoin, Ethereum, banks and other financial infrastructure also rely on cryptographic systems developed before practical quantum computing existed. The urgency received another boost in July when Anthropic researchers used an advanced Claude model to find a dramatically improved attack against HAWK, an experimental post-quantum signature scheme. Anthropic stressed that the research does not affect production systems, but it demonstrated how AI could accelerate the discovery of weaknesses even in cryptography designed for the quantum era. Ripple’s Four-Stage Quantum Plan Ripple's roadmap begins with assessing where XRPL is vulnerable and testing quantum-resistant algorithms recommended by NIST. During the second half of 2026, candidate post-quantum signatures are expected to run alongside existing elliptic-curve signatures on development networks. Ripple is also working with Project Eleven
Aug 30, 2026 · via coinpaper.com
Some signs of quantum gravity may be an illusion A new study reveals that some supposed signs of quantum gravity may be illusions, sharpening the search for evidence that spacetime itself truly behaves quantum mechanically. - Date: - August 29, 2026 - Source: - Kyushu University - Summary: - Quantum mechanics and Einsteinâs theory of gravity explain almost everything we see in nature, yet physicists still do not know how to unite them. A new theoretical framework suggests that some experiments that appear to show gravity behaving quantum mechanically may have a much more ordinary explanation. Researchers found that scenarios involving a supposed âsuperposition of gravityâ can sometimes be described equally well as quantum particles moving through classical spacetime. - Share: Two remarkably successful theories explain nearly everything we observe in the universe, from tiny atoms and molecules to planets, stars, and galaxies. Quantum mechanics describes the behavior of matter at very small scales, while Einstein's theory of gravity explains how stars and black holes move and how the Universe expands. Despite their enormous success, the two theories still do not fit neatly together. Physicists have spent decades searching for a theory of "quantum gravity" that could combine them into one consistent description of nature. The Challenge of Quantum Gravity A central expectation is that gravity itself should ultimately follow the rules of quantum mechanics. That possibility quickly becomes difficult to visualize. Quantum mechanics allows an object to be delocalized across multiple locations at the same time, an effect that has been repeatedly demonstrated with atoms and even small pieces of metal. Einstein's theory, meanwhile, treats gravity as a property of space and time itself -- it can bend, flatten, and support waves that travel through it, as gravitational wave detectors have confirmed. Because of this, many physicists have assumed
Aug 30, 2026 · via sciencedaily.com
Steel Frame Erected at £28m Port Talbot Carbon Research Hub Published on 08/29/2026 at 19:07 | Editorial boerse-global.de Work on the SWITCH Harbourside project in Port Talbot has reached a major milestone, with the steel frame for the new facility now being erected. The £28 million carbon research hub is designed to support industrial operations and decarbonisation efforts across the region, and is expected to create 95 jobs once complete. As industrial sites like Port Talbot ramp up new operations, keeping workplace safety documentation current becomes critical. Many employers underestimate how quickly risk assessments can become outdated during periods of change. A free toolkit with 41 ready-to-use templates helps you document hazards properly and stay compliant. Download the free Risk Assessment Toolkit Construction and Funding Construction of the hub began in March 2026, with Morgan Sindall acting as lead builder. The £28 million investment includes an initial outlay of £20 million, supplemented by £8.2 million from the Tata Transition Fund. The project forms part of wider efforts to revitalise the local economy following the closure of blast furnaces at the nearby Tata Steel site in September 2024. That closure led to the loss of 2,800 jobs and prompted the UK government to provide £80 million in support for transition and development initiatives. Regional Industrial Expansion The Port Talbot development coincides with several other industrial and research projects across the UK. In Angus, Scotland, the 100-metre-tall SOAR tower opened on August 24, 2026. The tower is equipped to measure more than 60 different greenhouse gases at various heights, improving the accuracy of emission estimates in line with the Paris Agreement. Further south in Sheffield, Castings Technology has completed installation of a large-scale vacuum arc remelting furnace at its new £18 million facility. The 196,000-square-foot site is dedicated to producing titanium alloy
Aug 30, 2026 · via ad-hoc-news.de
Lab equipment speaks dozens of incompatible languages. A microscope from one vendor, a liquid handler from another, a robotic arm from a third — each arrives with its own software, its own data formats, its own driver, and no ability to talk to anything next to it on the bench. Specialists spend weeks or months writing the custom code that makes them communicate. When Arco Bast, a postdoctoral scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus in Virginia, wanted to image thousands of neurons simultaneously across a rig he'd assembled from seven vendors' equipment, the integration problem alone threatened to consume the experiment. His solution to that problem became, two years later, the technical foundation of Anthropic's most consequential hardware bet. On August 27, 2026, Anthropic opened a research preview of MHS — a shared specification that lets AI agents discover and operate physical instruments, from microscopes and liquid handlers to robotic arms and quantum computer laser systems. Five partner labs and manufacturers published detailed results the same day, and those results are specific enough to shift what "AI in the lab" means from a promise to a demonstrated engineering outcome. What the Prior Standard Approaches Could Not Do The problem MHS addresses is not new, and Anthropic is not the first to try to solve it. The Standardization in Lab Automation consortium — known as SiLA — was founded in 2008 with exactly this mandate: give every lab instrument a common command vocabulary so scientists stop spending months on custom integration. SiLA spent eleven years reaching version 2.0, released in 2019, and as of 2026 still lacks an open communication standard with inconsistent manufacturer support. The reason that generation of standards fell short is structural: they standardized how devices are commanded — what verb to send when
Aug 30, 2026 · via techtimes.com
Ripple is working on a four-phase roadmap to prepare the XRP Ledger (XRPL) for potential future security threats posed by quantum computers. Ripple’s Senior Director of Engineering, Ayo Akinyele, stated that the company’s goal is to build the necessary infrastructure before quantum computers become a direct threat to existing cryptographic systems. In doing so, Ripple aims to minimize the impact on existing systems, user assets, and network operations. The first phase of the plan involves identifying potential security vulnerabilities in XRPL that could be exploited by quantum computers. This will be followed by testing quantum-resistant cryptographic methods. The next phase aims to run existing security mechanisms and new quantum-resistant solutions in parallel. This will verify the reliability of the new systems while preventing existing users and applications from being affected by a sudden transition. In the final stage, if the appropriate technologies mature, the plan is to transition the XRP Ledger network to more comprehensive quantum-resistant security standards. Ripple is also working on contingency transition mechanisms in case quantum computing technology advances faster than expected. In such a scenario, the network could move faster than the normal transition schedule to protect its security. XRPL currently allows users to change the keys that control their accounts without changing the accounts themselves. This feature is considered one of the elements that could provide an advantage in a potential cryptographic transition process. However, Ripple cannot unilaterally implement changes to transaction validation rules or network-wide cryptographic standards. Such updates require coordination among independent validators on XRPL and approval within the network’s governance process. Quantum computers are not yet at a level where they can practically break the cryptographic methods used by Bitcoin, XRP Ledger, or other major blockchain networks. However, many developers in the industry have already begun to evaluate scenarios for transitioning to
Aug 30, 2026 · via kucoin.com
StarkWare Executes ‘Quantum-Resistant’ Bitcoin Transaction on Mainnet Summary - StarkWare said it successfully processed a transaction using Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) technology on the Bitcoin (BTC) mainnet. - StarkWare said it handled a quantum-resistant transaction under Bitcoin’s existing consensus rules, without a soft fork, hard fork or core protocol upgrade. - The transaction was worth 10,000 satoshis and required several hours of GPU computation and about $150 to $200 in costs, highlighting limits on practical use. Forecast Trend Report by Period StarkWare said Aug. 29 that it had successfully processed a transaction on the Bitcoin mainnet using its Quantum Safe Bitcoin, or QSB, technology. QSB adds transaction conditions designed to defend against attacks by quantum computers. StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy developed the technology on Aug. 26. The transaction did not require a soft fork, hard fork or Bitcoin core protocol upgrade. StarkWare said it processed the quantum-resistant transaction using Bitcoin’s existing consensus rules. The transaction was worth 10,000 satoshis. Practical use remains limited. Processing the transaction required several hours of graphics processing unit, or GPU, computation and cost about $150 to $200. StarkWare Chief Executive Officer Eli Ben-Sasson said he still wants Bitcoin to adopt a soft fork and expects that to happen. Uk Jin wook9629@bloomingbit.ioH3LLO, World! I am Uk Jin.
Aug 29, 2026 · via en.bloomingbit.io
StarkWare has put a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction on mainnet, and the real story is narrower than the headline. It worked, but it doesn't make Bitcoin quantum-safe. On August 26, 2026, a strange Bitcoin transaction landed in block 964,199. It spent a 10,000-satoshi output using Avihu Levy's Quantum-Safe Bitcoin method, or QSB, and MARA Pool mined it after receiving it through its Slipstream service. According to StarkWare, it was the first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction ever mined on mainnet. That's a real milestone. Keep it in proportion. Bitcoin didn't change its rules. No soft fork passed. No new wallet standard appeared overnight. Levy, StarkWare's general manager of applications, had published the QSB research in April, and StarkWare engineer Tomer Giladi later helped take the idea from paper and code into a live transaction. Decrypt also reported that StarkWare described the work as a test of protection against a future quantum attack without changing Bitcoin's consensus rules. The transaction worked because Bitcoin already had enough room Bitcoin normally relies on elliptic-curve cryptography, the math behind ECDSA and Schnorr signatures. A strong enough quantum computer running Shor's algorithm could eventually attack that setup. That is the fear sitting underneath every serious Bitcoin quantum discussion, even if the machine needed to do it still hasn't arrived. Vitalik Buterin has unveiled Lean Ethereum, a three to four year plan to rebuild Ethereum's consensus, cryptography and execution layers around quantum resistance, built-in privacy and steady scaling. Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist and StarkWare's Eli Ben-Sasson both praised the vision but said the timeline is too slow. - Ethereum Lean protocol rebuild timeline - Vitalik Buterin Ethereum overhaul plan QSB takes a narrower route. It uses Bitcoin's existing legacy Script rules, hash-based one-time signatures, and what Cointelegraph described as computational searches that bind authorization to one specific transaction.
Aug 29, 2026 · via startupfortune.com