Project Eleven, a company focused on the development of post-quantum cryptography, has raised $6 million to help protect Bitcoin (BTC) and other digital assets from future quantum computing threats.
According to an announcement shared with Cointelegraph on Thursday, this funding round was co-led by leading Web3 investors Variant Fund and quantum technology investor Quantonation, marking Quantonation's first investment in the crypto space.
Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, stated that this funding will enable the company to build "the tools, standards, and ecosystem necessary to ensure the security of digital assets in a post-quantum world."
According to data from Eleven Labs and YCharts cited by Project Eleven, "there are currently 10,095,693 Bitcoin addresses with a non-zero balance and exposed public keys, totaling 6,262,905 BTC—worth approximately $648 billion—at risk of potential quantum attacks."
The company's first product is a cryptographic registry called Yellowpages, designed to allow users to create quantum-resistant proofs linking current Bitcoin addresses to new secure addresses without relying on on-chain activity. Alex mentioned that the registry will serve as a backup plan in the event that quantum computers crack existing Bitcoin keys.
Alex also noted that Yellowpages has passed an audit by Cure 53, and the company will soon release the audit results. Project Eleven has also engaged in discussions with Bitcoin Core developers regarding potential future upgrades.
Adam Back—an individual referenced in the Bitcoin (BTC) white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto—previously stated that the pressure from quantum computing could force Bitcoin's creators to reveal whether they are still alive.
The threat of quantum computing to Bitcoin is a controversial topic, with some arguing that it is a theoretical threat not worth dedicating specialized resources to. Nevertheless, many take this risk seriously.
According to a document from the end of 2024, the National Security Agency (NSA) "plans to make all national security systems quantum-resistant by 2035." Under these plans, newly procured systems will require quantum-resistant encryption by 2027, while older equipment will be phased out between 2030 and 2031.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) also stated at the end of 2024 that its goal is "to achieve widespread adoption of post-quantum cryptography (PQC) by 2035."
"This is not a question of whether it is theoretically possible, but when it becomes practically feasible," Alex said in an interview with Cointelegraph.
In 2020, the nonprofit organization Rand conducted an expert survey on this topic. The report estimated that the average time for the emergence of quantum computers capable of breaking cryptography is 2033, but noted that "earlier or later developments are possible," with a time range starting from 2027.
Rand's research predates a study released by Google in May, which successfully reduced the requirements for breaking RSA-2048 from 20 million to about 1 million noisy quantum bits running for a week, but this still far exceeds current capabilities, as there are only a few hundred stable quantum bits today.
Alex told Cointelegraph, "Quantum computers can already factor small ECDSA public keys." However, classical computers can do this as well.
In a 2022 paper, researchers shared their achievement of factoring a 48-bit semiprime 261980999226229 on a 10-qubit quantum computer. Last year, D-Wave used a quantum annealing computer to factor a 50-bit semiprime through a hybrid classical and quantum search.
In comparison, the record on classical computers was set in 2020 by a supercomputer, which took about 2,700 CPU core years to successfully factor an 829-bit RSA key involving a 415-bit prime. This is equivalent to running on a medium-sized high-performance computing cluster for about three months.
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Original article: “Project Eleven Raises $6M to Defend Bitcoin (BTC) from Quantum Attacks”
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