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Will the myth of robust security surrounding distributed ledger technology crumble in the face of relentless optimization driven by algorithms and AI?
For a long time, the threat posed by quantum computers to public-key cryptography—the foundation of blockchain security—was dismissed as a concern for the distant future. However, the situation shifted dramatically in March 2026, when a research team including Google Quantum AI drastically reduced the quantum resources required to solve the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem (ECDLP).
Furthermore, the open project "ecdsa.fail" pushed the efficiency of cryptanalysis to its absolute limit through the collaboration of over 100 researchers and AI. They succeeded in compressing the quantum computational units needed to break the encryption down to "835"—a theoretical lower bound beyond which further reduction is impossible. This implies that the energy and cost required for an attack are far lower than previously anticipated. With hardware advancements converging with software optimization, the timeline for the arrival of "Q-Day"—the moment encryption is rendered obsolete—is rapidly accelerating.
Bitcoin (BTC) finds itself in the crosshairs, harboring what is considered the most critical "ticking time bomb." It is estimated that approximately 7 million BTC—representing about 34% of the total circulating supply—sit dormant in early-generation addresses or addresses where public keys were exposed through past transactions. Experts warn that these holdings are currently completely defenseless against quantum attacks. While the community is exploring the adoption of P2MR (BIP-360) to facilitate a migration to quantum-resistant addresses, the greatest challenge lies in handling the millions of "dormant assets" for which private keys have been lost.
BIP-361, proposed to safeguard these assets (or to prevent a market crash caused by their mass release), goes beyond merely prohibiting transfers to legacy addresses; it incorporates a time-bound rule to forcibly terminate the old system once a specific deadline has passed. Ultimately, they rewrite the consensus layer—the fundamental rules of the network—and summarily "force-freeze" (burn) any assets that have not yet been migrated.