Nine blockchain and cybersecurity companies formed the Quantum Alliance on Oct. 15 to create shared post-quantum security standards for blockchains including Bitcoin and Ethereum. According to CoinDesk, the alliance estimates that public keys linked to about 30% of Bitcoin have already been exposed, including roughly 1.1 million BTC believed to belong to Satoshi Nakamoto. Members are not aligned, however, on when the quantum threat becomes practical or whether those coins should be frozen.
Founding members and structure
According to The Quantum Insider, the alliance’s nine founding members are quantum-resistant blockchain project Quantus, American Fortress, Intmax, hardware wallet maker Keystone, Midnight Foundation backed by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, Postquant Labs, Abelian, The Vault, and cybersecurity firm Hacken.
The group describes itself as an open standards organization. It says its process is modeled on the Internet Engineering Task Force, with open individual participation and proposals advanced through public evidence, rough consensus, and working implementations. Company size and token holdings do not affect voting power, and all outputs are set to be published openly.
The alliance has outlined four areas of work:
- blockchain migration, including exposed public keys and dormant accounts
- post-quantum zero-knowledge proofs
- wallet security
- cross-chain compatibility during migration
Alliance estimate puts exposed Bitcoin public keys at about 6 million BTC
The core concern is that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could one day derive private keys from public keys that have been revealed on-chain and then move the funds. The alliance estimates that Bitcoin with exposed public keys accounts for 30.2% of supply, or about 6 million BTC when calculated against current circulating supply.
That risk is not immediate. The report says current quantum computers do not have the capability to do this today, so those coins are not presently being stolen because of quantum computing.
Members also differ on timing. Richard Carback, chief technology officer at Postquant Labs, said 2028 is a realistic timeframe. Bryn Bennett, chief revenue officer at The Vault, said, 「No one knows the exact date,」 adding that the real issue is whether custodians can complete migration in time.
Bennett also said the main cost is not cryptography itself but coordinating wallets, exchanges, custodians, and protocol developers.
Disagreement over freezing exposed coins
The sharpest debate centers on what should be done with coins whose public keys are already exposed. CoinDesk reported that Carback prefers migrating the coins instead of freezing them, and suggested placing them into a trust so holders who can later prove ownership could reclaim them.
Bennett took a different view, saying any decision on freezing should be made through Bitcoin’s own governance process rather than by the industry. He also warned that such a move could set a precedent on property rights.
Earlier, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao suggested freezing about 1.1 million BTC linked to Satoshi, and developer Jameson Lopp also proposed restricting coins seen as vulnerable to attack. Critics, though, argue that freezing runs against Bitcoin’s core promise that no one can confiscate your coins.
Post-quantum migration is moving up the agenda
The issue has gained traction recently. ABMedia previously reported that Google’s Willow quantum chip made progress on a computing bottleneck, while Coinbase, which holds about 5% of Bitcoin, also put forward post-quantum migration principles and urged preparation to start now.
The shift from isolated calls to a formal alliance shows that parts of the crypto industry are now treating post-quantum migration as a long-term coordination effort rather than a distant theoretical risk.