Project Eleven, a development firm focused on post-quantum cryptography, raised $6 million to help secure Bitcoin and other digital assets against future quantum computing threats.
According to a Thursday announcement shared with Cointelegraph, the funding round was co-led by leading Web3 investor Variant Fund and quantum tech investor Quantonation, among others. It marks Quantonation’s first investment in the crypto space.
Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden said the funding will allow the company to build “the tools, standards and ecosystem required to ensure digital assets remain secure in a post-quantum world.”
According to Eleven Labs and YCharts data cited by Project Eleven, “There are currently 10,095,693 Bitcoin addresses with a non-zero balance and an exposed public key, putting a total of 6,262,905 BTC — worth about $648 billion — at risk of a potential quantum attack.”
Related: Bitcoin must upgrade or fall victim to quantum computing in 5 years
The company’s first release, a cryptographic registry called Yellowpages, is designed to let users create a quantum-resistant proof linking their current Bitcoin addresses to new, secure ones, without relying on onchain activity. Pruden said the registry will act as a fallback in the event that quantum computers compromise existing Bitcoin keys.
Pruden said Yellowpages was audited by Cure 53 and that the company will post the audit results shortly. Project Eleven has also opened discussions with Bitcoin Core developers about potential future upgrades.
The quantum threat to Bitcoin
Adam Back, cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin (BTC) white paper, previously suggested that quantum computing pressure may force Bitcoin’s creator to reveal whether they’re alive.
The quantum threat to Bitcoin is a controversial topic, with some arguing that it is a theoretical threat that does not warrant dedicated resources. Still, the risk is taken seriously by many.
The US National Security Agency “intends that all National Security Systems will be quantum-resistant by 2035,” according to a late 2024 document. Under those plans, new acquisitions will require quantum-resistant encryption by 2027, and legacy gear will be phased out in 2030–2031.
The US National Institute of Standards and Technology also stated in late 2024 that its goal is “achieving widespread [post-quantum cryptography] adoption by 2035.”
“It’s not a question of whether or not it’s theoretical, it’s at what point it becomes practical,” Pruden told Cointelegraph.
US nonprofit and global policy think tank, research institute and public sector consulting firm Rand conducted an expert survey on the subject in 2020. The report estimated that the average time until a cryptography-breaking quantum computer emerges is 2033, but noted that “earlier and much later development are possible,” with the range starting from 2027.
Related: The Q-Day Prize challenge, explained: Can quantum computers really break Bitcoin?
Rand’s research preceded a study released by Google in May, which managed to reduce the requirement to break RSA-2048 from 20 million to about 1 million noisy qubits running for one week, still well beyond today’s capabilities, which hover around a few hundred stable qubits.
Classical computers are still king
Pruden told Cointelegraph that “Quantum computers can already factor small ECDSA public keys.” Still, the same can be said about classical computers.
In a 2022 paper, researchers shared the achievement of factoring a 48-bit semiprime number, 261,980,999,226,229, on a 10-qubit computer. Last year, D-Wave used a quantum annealing computer to factor a 50-bit semiprime number using a hybrid classical and quantum search.
For context, the record on classical computers was set in 2020 on a supercomputer with about 2,700 CPU-core-years, which was able to factor a 829-bit RSA key and involved a 415-bit prime. This is equivalent to about three months on a medium HPC cluster.
Magazine: Bitcoin vs. the quantum computer threat: Timeline and solutions (2025–2035)
