GM frens, this is the Quantum Doom Clock with Colton Dillion and Rick Carback, the founders of Quip Network: the only protocol that defends your crypto from quantum computer hackers with no need to bridge funds or change out your keys. We put together this site and newsletter because the clock is ticking toward the day when your assets can be stolen by hackers with sufficiently powerful quantum computers.

Stop the Clock!

TL;DR: We launched post-quantum Quip smart accounts on Base! More chains are coming soon. You can move to the next section if you’re here for other news.

Today we get to kick off with some very happy news, marking a new milestone in quantum-resistance. You can now send and receive tokens as well as NFTs in complete safety from quantum attackers, all while earning your share of the future QUIP supply for getting protected early.

Why is this a big deal? Well, even if you use a hardware wallet or multisig, a quantum computer hacker can calculate your seed phrase from just one signed transaction. Depositing to a quip protects you with a post-quantum, ever-changing, second key that only gets used once and then discarded. You can use your usual wallet stack to transact in a quip, and our app will rotate your second key to keep the quantum hackers guessing.

That's right, if you're using a hardware wallet or multisignature address, quips can wrap your existing workflow with one more layer of security. That way, all the layers of security have to fail in order to compromise your funds. And quips support your favorite on-chain apps as usual, so you don’t have to give up yield farming just to be a little more secure.

Feel free to give it a try and let us know what you think. We’re always striving to improve and we want to make sure that everyone has a good reason to be quantum-resistant. You can also get some sweet token rewards for depositing to a Quip and helping us bootstrap the network.

Quantum Proof Bitcoin

The Bitcoin devs are starting to take quantum computers seriously. Hunter Beast, the author of BIP-360, gave a presentation highlighting the serious concerns about Bitcoin's vulnerability to quantum computing threats. While current quantum computers are not advanced enough to pose an immediate threat, major tech companies are investing billions into quantum development, with approximately 4-6 million Bitcoins currently vulnerable to "long exposure attacks." Particularly at risk are pay-to-public-key addresses (including Satoshi's coins), reused addresses, and taproot addresses.

In addition to BIP-360, Hunter proposes an "hourglass" approach to limit processing of vulnerable transactions over time. This is not a quick fix but "an immense coordination problem" requiring action from node runners, exchanges, and the broader Bitcoin community. Despite the uncertain timeline, the potentially catastrophic consequences make preparation essential for long-term crypto asset protection. If you want to learn more, check out this epic post-talk interview with Hunter and Isabel Foxen Duke. 

The Quantum FOOM Clock?

If you follow AI discourse very closely, you’ll hear a lot of arguments about FOOM, the possibility that AI will recursively self-improve faster than humans can even think and before you know it we’ll have literal galaxy-brained AI watching over us. Since we’ve arrested the march of quantum doom, maybe it’s time to look forward to all the great things we might accomplish if we have our own exponentially rapid advancements in quantum computing.  

• IBM is factoring numbers as high as 253 - You heard that right, it may not sound like much yet, but factoring numbers is big money. If you can factor large numbers then you can also break RSA encryption, or more optimistically you have an entry point to more complex problems like set packing, which has applications in auction optimality and social choice.
• Quantinuum claims quantum advantage - When determining the likelihood of a particle to collide or decay, quantum computers have classical computers beat. Could be that we’ll get more accurate readings for more efficient nuclear energy.
• Scott Aaronson demonstrates certifiable randomness - And NIST approves it for government use! This is the first NIST-certified quantum computing output, so expect to see more real-world usecases emerge over the coming months.
• Alice & Bob with the Cat Qubit’s Meow - Cat qubits captured some attention when Amazon released their Ocelot platform, but Alice & Bob have shown a dazzling 160x improvement with their photonics platform. Could be that this cat will land on its feet.
• Qudits make qubits look ditzy - A qubit only contemplates two possible spin states, while qudits can model n-dimensional spin states, providing even more geometric algebraic horsepower. If AI is a series of tensors with floating point values, it’s possible qudits could one day model simple AIs directly.

There are many things to look forward to, but we’re still in the infant stages. But if looking at my son crawling is any indication, the running days are not too far off!

A Dose of Humility

When you’re working in the world of quantum physics and quantum computing, it’s good to have a modicum of gravitas and reserve. The future is really uncertain and everyone is trying to do their best! But sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between people talking up their book unscrupulously versus getting a little ahead of themselves with irrational exuberance. For the following stories, you decide:

• IBM says quantum supremacy in 2 years - It’s a good thing we froze the clock, otherwise we might be panicking. IBM seems to think that we’ll have useful quantum computing 33% faster than the doom clock says to expect. Yikes!
• Dwave fights off the haters -  Dwave claimed quantum advantage on certain magnetic field calculation tasks, but some researchers demonstrated a classical algorithm that could keep up on a subset of their tests. Dwave sniffed saying, ‘Try ‘em all, then we’ll talk!’
• Nvidia’s Jensen Huang Eats Crow - He invited every major quantum computing CEO onstage to tell them sorry for spiking your stock prices. Guess he doesn’t want to be left behind on this growing segment that has the potential to change the cost function on linear algebra.
• A Quantum FOSS OS - In happy news, the University of Osaka and Fujutsu are collaborating to create open-source cloud management software for quantum computers. This will be incredibly useful, especially because quantum computing architectures are still so diverse.

Frequently Asked Questions

Have a question? Just e-mail us at team at quantumdoomclock dot com. Below are the top questions we have received since our last update.

The Quantum Doom Clock is brought to you by Richard Carback and Colton Dillion, the cofounders of Quip Network

The Quantum Doom Clock is a monthly mailing list that summarizes news for Quantum Computing and its effects on the cryptography and cryptocurrency spaces. We do not sell your e-mail.