Nine Crypto Companies Form Quantum Alliance
A Quantum Alliance formed by nine crypto companies was established today. The publicly listed members include security firm Hacken, Charles Hoskinson's Midnight Foundation, quantum-resistant Layer 1 blockchain Quantus, and Postquant Labs, with other members including The Vault, Keystone, American Fortress, Intmax, and Abelian.
The alliance positions itself as an open standards organization, aiming to establish common security standards for blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and to release quantum resistance assessment standards, testing methods, and migration guidelines. The work will cover four areas: blockchain migration, post-quantum zero-knowledge proofs, wallet security, and cross-chain compatibility.
The alliance estimates that approximately 6.4 million Bitcoins (30.2% of the total supply) have exposed public keys, including about 1.1 million under Satoshi Nakamoto. The public keys of these addresses have been permanently recorded on-chain, and theoretically, sufficiently powerful quantum computers could derive private keys from public keys using Shor's algorithm in the future, but current quantum computers are not yet capable of stealing these assets.
There are significant disagreements within the Quantum Alliance regarding the timeline of threats and responses. Bryn Bennett, Chief Revenue Officer of The Vault, stated that no one knows the exact date, but it is estimated to be moving closer, with the key being whether custodians can complete migration before the threat arrives. Richard Carback, Chief Technology Officer of Postquant Labs, believes that 2028 is a realistic timeframe.
The core controversy revolves around whether to freeze vulnerable assets. Carback prefers migration over freezing and suggests establishing a trust for owners to prove and redeem later. Bennett pointed out that freezing is a governance decision of the Bitcoin network, and any freezing would set a precedent of exchanging quantum risk for property rights and neutrality, with custodians only protecting client assets rather than abandoning them.
Previously, CZ suggested freezing Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoins, and developer Jameson Lopp also proposed limiting vulnerable tokens, but critics argue that this contradicts Bitcoin's promise of being non-seizable. The alliance plans to release common security testing and migration guidelines to address issues such as exposed public keys, dormant accounts, and larger transaction volumes for post-quantum signatures.
The alliance adopts an open consensus process similar to the IETF, not allocating voting rights based on company size or token holdings. The first outputs will include publicly defined quantum readiness and migration reference designs.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Discussions on quantum threats trace back to analyses of elliptic curve cryptography (such as Bitcoin's secp256k1) after the 2010s. Research from Google Quantum AI and others has estimated the required physical quantum bits to be reduced by about 20 times between 2025 and 2026. The Quantum Doom Clock developed by Postquant Labs co-founders Carback and Dillion has pointed to a March 2028 window since early 2025. Projects like Quantus have adopted NIST ML-DSA post-quantum signatures from their genesis block, while Bitcoin core developers have previously explored migration through paths like BIP-360 but have not formed a unified standard.
The alliance members cover Layer 1 (Quantus), privacy chains (Midnight), hardware wallets (Keystone), security audits (Hacken), and the quantum computing market (Postquant Labs' Quip Network), aiming to prioritize migration, wallet, and cross-chain rules through open standards, allowing networks to adopt directly rather than developing independently. Carback prefers transferring vulnerable assets into a trust structure rather than freezing them to retain redemption paths for owners, while Bennett emphasizes that freezing falls under Bitcoin governance, and custodians have no responsibility to handle abandoned assets.
This is similar to how the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) establishes protocol standards through open processes, or the early blockchain collaborations addressing 51% attacks and replay protection. The current stage is early in standard-setting and migration path design, rather than having implemented strong upgrade or freezing mechanisms, with most members being non-Bitcoin core projects.
Essentially, this is a matter of regulatory change and governance precedent: quantum risk transforms technical threats into governance decisions regarding property rights and network neutrality. Freezing or limiting vulnerable assets would establish a precedent of "for security, assets can be seized," while migration guidelines and open standards attempt to reduce exposure through voluntary transfers and new address formats without changing consensus rules, shifting the industry from single-chain upgrades to cross-network compatible infrastructure reconstruction.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
Standards precede threats, or else crises define standards.
Freezing is governance; migration is technical.
Exposed public keys = future derivable private keys.