Project Eleven, a quantum research and advocacy company, launched the Q-Day prize, a global competition offering 1 bitcoin (BTC) to the first team capable of breaking a cryptographic key (ECC) of Elliptical Courbe, the cryptography which secures the Bitcoin network, using Shor’s algorithm on a quantum computer.
Shor algorithm is a quantum calculation method that effectively facilitates large numbers in their main components, theoretically allowing quantum computers to break cryptographic algorithms like RSA and elliptical curve cryptography used in Bitcoin and other blockchain networks.
We have just launched the Q-Day Prize.
1 BTC at the first team to break a toy version of Bitcoin cryptography using a quantum computer.
Deadline: April 5, 2026
Mission: Protect 6m BTC (more than $ 500 billion)– Project 11 (@QDAYCLOCK) April 16, 2025
The competition presents itself then that the progress of quantum computer science means that an achievable quantum computer may no longer be in the years. The ELEVENT project has also identified more than 10 million Bitcoin addresses with non -zero sales potentially at risk of quantum attacks.
The Bitcoin community is aware of the quantum computer threat and works on solutions.
As Coindesk has previously reported, a proposal to improve Bitcoin (BIP), entitled Quantum Resistant Migration Migration Protocol (QRAMP), was introduced in early April, which suggests applying a network migration to post-quantum cryptography to save Bitcoin wallets. This would require a hard fork, however, and obtaining this kind of consensus would be a difficult battle.
The Quantum BTQ start -up also proposed its own solution: a quantum alternative to Bitcoin work proof called sampling of coarse grain (CGB).
The CGBS operates using quantum IT to generate unique photon models (light particles called bosons), replacing traditional mining puzzles with quantum -based sampling tasks for validation. But it also requires a hard fork, and appetite for such a change is not yet known.
