Last week in quantum:
Quantus picked
@NEARProtocol as QTC's first route into the wider crypto market
@QuantusNetwork named
@near_intents as the first venue planned for access to QTC following its September 9th mainnet launch.
The integration gives the post-quantum-native chain a route toward cross-chain liquidity without relying on centralized custodians.
Bitcoin's post-quantum defense is starting to take shape.
Researcher
@christine_dkim mapped four proposals now being discussed around Bitcoin's quantum migration: BIP-360, SHRINCS, Lifeboat and DropKick.
BIP-360 and SHRINCS focus on preventing future exposure with new output and signature designs. Lifeboat and DropKick are proposed rescue mechanisms for users who fail to migrate before a quantum attack becomes possible.
None are active on Bitcoin today, but together they show the migration problem moving from one proposal into a broader set of prevention and recovery tools.
The
@ENERGY opened a competition worth up to $215 million for 100-logical-qubit machines
The Department of Energy launched the Quantum Genesis Q Competition for fault-tolerant systems with at least 100 logical qubits capable of hundreds of millions of fault-tolerant operations.
The funding includes a $100 million pool for reaching 100 logical qubits, with additional $50 million pools for systems that reach 150 and 200.
@Ledger stress-tested what SHRINCS would mean for Bitcoin wallets
Ledger reviewed SHRINCS, the draft hash-based post-quantum signature proposal for Bitcoin, from the wallet and custody side.
Its current stateful signatures range from 548 to 4,619 bytes, with a 5,777-byte stateless fallback. The harder problem is state management, because reusing a one-time signing slot can let someone forge signatures.
@Oracle shipped post-quantum key exchange into Java 27
Java 27 added hybrid post-quantum key exchange to TLS 1.3, combining ML-KEM with existing elliptic-curve cryptography.
Applications using Java's standard TLS APIs can benefit by default without rewriting their code. That puts post-quantum migration inside software infrastructure used across enterprise applications.
Post-quantum migration is becoming an implementation problem.
Java can easily ship new cryptography in a software release. Bitcoin has to coordinate signatures, wallets, recovery rules and consensus across an entire network.