Google announced on the 9th that its newly developed chip Willow has successfully overcome the key challenge of quantum computing, with the chip capable of performing calculations with 105 qubits, solving problems that would take a traditional computer 1 billion years in just 5 minutes.
This achievement was published in the scientific journal Nature, and is considered a major milestone in the field of quantum computing. However, the progress in quantum computing has also raised concerns about the security of Bit, as quantum computers could theoretically break the encryption algorithms, especially the early Bit addresses using the "Pay-to-Public-Key (P2PK)" format.
The approximately 1 million Bits owned by Bit creator Satoshi Nakamoto are stored in this format, and therefore could become potential targets of attack.
P2PK and Quantum Threat
P2PK is an early payment format of Bit, which directly exposes the public key. In traditional computing, it is almost impossible to derive the private key from the public key, but the development of quantum computers may change this. Quantum computing can use Shor's algorithm to derive the private key from the public key, and thus gain access to the Bits in the relevant addresses.
In contrast, the most common modern Bit address format is "Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH)", which only exposes the hashed public key, and is relatively more effective in resisting quantum attacks. Therefore, the early P2PK addresses are considered the most vulnerable link in the Bit ecosystem.
Should Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoins be Frozen?
Regarding the threat of quantum computing, Ava Labs founder Emin Gün Sirer analyzed today that quantum computing is currently not enough to pose a real threat to Bit, mainly because attackers only have a very short time window to crack the public key after a transaction is published:
The public key is only exposed when the transaction is initiated. Therefore, the quantum attacker only has a brief window of opportunity to crack the public key after seeing it in the transaction, and before the transaction is written to the Block chain. The faster the Block chain, the more difficult the attack. In Bit, the quantum attacker must crack the public key within 5 to 30 minutes. In Avalanche, the attacker only has 1 second, or even less.
However, Emin Gün Sirer warned about the 1 million Bits owned by Satoshi Nakamoto, which were mined in the early days of Bit using the very early P2PK format, which directly exposes the public key, giving attackers ample time to crack it, which would be the "ultimate prize" for cryptography.
Emin Gün Sirer mentioned that the P2PK format is no longer used by modern Bit wallets or systems (such as Avalanche), but it was the standard in the early days of Bit. Therefore, as the threat of quantum computing approaches, the Bit community may need to consider freezing Satoshi Nakamoto's Bits, or more broadly setting a termination date to freeze all unspent transaction outputs (UTXOs) using the P2PK format.
Community May Have Debates
However, some members of the Bit community may strongly oppose the suggestion to freeze Satoshi Nakamoto's Bits. Bit extremists may believe that this would go against the original principles of Bit's decentralization and immutability, causing Bit to no longer be the original Bit they recognize, and such controversies could undermine the foundation of Bit as an immutable decentralized network.
