Episode 383 - Countdown to Q-Day with Project 11

Transcript

Welcome to Zero Knowledge. I'm your host, Anna Rose. In this podcast, we will be exploring the latest in zero knowledge research and the decentralized web, as well as new paradigms that promise to change the way we interact and transact online. This week I speak with Alex Prudin and Connor Degan from Project 11. We return to the topic of quantum computers and the threat they pose to cryptographic systems across the board and specifically to many of the major blockchains we use today. We go over the quantum threat in detail, look at the different algorithms within the

blockchain stack, and identify which ones are most at risk in the near future. We discuss why simply upgrading a network doesn't solve the quantum problem and walk through what address owners would actually have to do to protect their funds. We also get into the mitigation strategies, including what project 11 is proposing and how different chains are approaching this challenge. Quick disclosure, I'm a small investor in Project 11, but the project has evolved since I first invested, so it's great to hear about their progress and get an update directly from the team. Now, before we kick off, I just want to share that we've launched season 3 of the ZK whiteboard sessions. The ZK whiteboard sessions are produced by ZK Hack in collaboration with Bane Capital Crypto. This series goes deep on some of the key concepts in ZK. I've added a

link in the show notes. Be sure to check out these videos. They are a great way to learn about the fundamentals and techniques powering the ZK systems we often discuss on this show. Also, if you're looking to jump into ZK professionally or just looking for a new role, I wanted to point you towards the ZK jobs board. There you can find job postings from top teams working in ZK. And if you're a team looking to hire, you can also post your job there today. We've heard great things from teams who found their perfect hire through this platform and we hope it can help you as well. Find out more over at jobsport.zeronowledge.fm. You can find this on our website and I've added it to the show notes. Now, here is my interview with Alex and Connor from Project 11.

Today I'm here with Alex Prudin and Connor Degan from Project 11. Welcome to the show both of you. >> Awesome. It's great to be here again. Thanks for having us. Excited to be here. >> Cool. So this episode I feel like is going to be revisiting a topic that we were talking about earlier this year. Quantum computing, quantum engineering. We did two episodes on the show back in I think it was like April, May. We did quantum engineering with Yelena Vokovich where we really dug into quantum computers like what they are and then we did an episode on quantum punks with Alex and Nicola where we talked about how quantum computing and cryptography were overlapping. So, I'm going to

obviously add those two links to the show notes, but I want to highlight one other episode which was like an older one. Like back in 2023, we had Orset on the show and in that he talked about like quantum computers potentially breaking Bitcoin and the tests you'd have to do to figure out if it's been broken. And I feel like it's really important to highlight that episode series because what I know of Project 11 is this is the problem space that you guys are tackling. So yeah, I'm going to add all of these links to in the show notes. I know we're going to dive into it, but I wanted to give a bit of context to our listeners. Cool. So before we jump into project 11, I also want to catch up with both of you. Alex,

you're like part of the ZK podcast crew at this point. You've been on the show a number of times. You've hosted study clubs. You've hosted stages at ZK Summit. I feel like most people in our community know you, but there's been some changes in your world in the last year, year and a half, or since you've been on the show. So, why don't we hear from you what's been happening? And also like, yeah, tell us about the move to Project 11. >> Yeah, great. So, uh, yeah, people are like, "Hey, I thought this guy was at Alo." Um, yeah, which I was. And, uh, and actually I'm still quite involved and I'll talk about that, but just for context for those folks who may not know me, I'll just briefly give my background. I was a US Army officer. I got interested in crypto and blockchain overseas uh for

humanitarian use cases. Ultimately, I started my career in crypto after grad school as an investor and then I ended up at Alo. But in particular, after I left the army, I became really interested in cryptography. That's the common thread between Alo and Project 11. So, both are really at the cutting edge of cryptography, right? So Alio was all about zero knowledge cryptography which is of course this is the zero knowledge podcast I'm sure your listeners are familiar with that concept but you know project 11 we're focused on we call it future proofing future building using postquantum cryptography to future proof digital asset networks and build the quantum rails or the postquantum financial rails of the future. So for me, this is quite a related problem space and there's a lot

of similarities and in fact we work with a lot of people and we'll probably get into this on the show that that have a foot in both worlds. >> Nice. >> But so maybe just quickly on on the transition from Alio, I was the first employee at Alio. I ultimately became the CEO, but I was not one of the founders. And Howard Woo, who's been on the show a number of times, I guess we call Ellie the godfather of ZK now. I saw that on X. But Howard is maybe the great uncle of ZK then if we're going with that framing. Any in any event, Howard's at the helm again at Alio and I think he's doing a great job. I am the president of the board of the Aloon Network Foundation and I'm happy to continue to support the team in that role. So yeah, but now I'm over here at

Project 11 as the founding CEO and with Connor and we've been having a lot of fun tackling all the postquantum stuff. >> Cool. And you're still in the ZK community even if you're not doing as much CK these days, right? That's That's right. >> I think people also know you from the ZK podcast Telegram group and your spicy opinions on Twitter. So, I'll leave folks to find those. All right, Connor, let's hear from you. This is the first time that you're on the show. Share with us a little bit about your background and what led to the founding of Project 11.

>> I'm from Dublin, so born and bred Irish. I uh I'm a cryptographer so I'm not I wouldn't you know I like to mention that for me definitely crypto equals cryptography I would say uh so I've been a cryptographer for the last few years mostly on the applied side focus on the protocol there spent the last seven years trying to figure out decentralized identity which turns out is really difficult in the Ethereum world uh so I was doing that before project 11 and getting stuck into all things DIDs and you know plenty plenty to talk about there and then about nearly a year ago decided to go all in on this postquantum thing uh you know this quantum threat's been growing and I'm sure we'll we'll will drift into that shortly and decided now seems like a right time to to go and take all that cryptography knowledge and

point it directly at this postquantum threat study these new algorithms and get stuck in. So I'm the VP of engineering and co-founder of project 11 and I spent most of my day figuring out these postquantum algorithms and how we're going to deploy them to the real world. >> Nice. when you were sort of initially founding project 11 though was the focus blockchain case use cases or because quantum like quantum computers and the and the threats that they pose it's so much wider than that it's like all encryption it's like every bank security system like there there's such a wide space of attack potentially from a quantum like a malicious actor with a quantum computer so you were studying quantum computing but were you yeah were you already focused on this use case

>> yeah I think you're right. So, you know, this this problem isn't defined for just blockchains. This, as you rightly say, this is everything. Everywhere we use these quantum vulnerable schemes, they need to change. They need to migrate. They need to figure this out. They need to deploy these new schemes. Initially, when we started P1, we actually were heavily focused on blockchain specifically. And then, like all things, we drifted away and thought maybe let's look at other fields and then kind of which in a nice way came right back to where we all started and and are still focusing on these blockchains. For us, I think blockchains have this unique vulnerability. They're they're very different to all of those systems you've just listed. And you take, you know, something as simple as a browser. One day you'll open that up, you'll be postum secure. You'll do nothing. You'll

close your laptop one night. You'll open it up and that's your migration finished. >> Like the company that provide like it'll be an update. >> So Chrome will ship an update. You won't even see the notes. You'll just one day you'll say, "Hey, your Chrome browser has been updated. You're now postquantum secure." >> Blockchains, crypto in general, extremely different. For the first time ever, users hold these key materials. the keys mean a lot more in these systems. They identify more things. There's more reliance on them being maybe fast or small or whatever it might be. So with these unique vulnerabilities and and obviously we'll we'll we'll jump into exactly what those vulnerabilities might be. It just makes blockchains that a little bit more of an interesting problem to solve but also a much harder problem to solve. Um not to take away you you mentioned banks. I think outside

of blockchains I'd say banks are one of the most difficult to migrate. A lot of these are still running on cobalt mainframes and running triple desks and you know they haven't even migrated to the latest symmetric key standards. >> Not going to be easy for them either. So I don't think it's necessarily a walk in the park for everyone. But you know you take some of these tech companies you know Cloudflare, Chrome, Apple, they'll roll out a lot of these things themselves to some extent and and hopefully do it properly. But really for blockchains it's it's a much more diverse and dynamic environment. And for us at project 11 that's one of the main reasons that's our core focus. >> That's cool. Let's define the company then like you have just kind of identified the space that you're working in which is like protecting in a way or

yeah providing solutions for blockchains as quantum computers come online. So what is project 11 doing like what when you talk about building kind of cryptographic systems are you building an alternative system? Are you building an upgrade path? Are you lobbying? Are you educating? Are you doing all of those things? Yes. No. The uh um yeah know I said it earlier and I'll come back to it again which is future proofing future building and I think so project 11 is really a company at the convergence of two longunning trends.

One is quantum computing. Quantum computers as listeners of your show probably know and all those guests you referenced earlier described this like you know initially were theorized in the 80s you know became much more concrete in the '90s and then people have been trying to build these things for the past couple decades and really in the last year have some very fundamental problems been solved and now it's kind of a race scale and so you know at this point I think it's it's relatively uncontroversial to say that it's inevitable that a quantum that quantum computers their fall tolerant will exist. So that's one trend. The other trend is that digital assets, so blockchains, I mean go back 10 years to when I first got into the space. I mean there's it is night and day different in terms of the adoption

>> for sure and knowledge about Yeah. >> But you go like you know 10 years ago people talked seriously about banning Bitcoin. Now it's you know it's a widely held asset and retirement funds. You have banks issuing stable coins. So the so the adoption and proliferation of blockchain rails is increasingly defining the foundational layer of finance for all the reasons we've talked about right it's like it's cheaper to settle blah blah blah right and so of so quantum kind of breaks the fundamental security model of blockchains and blockchains are increasingly becoming the foundation of the world's financial real so in the sense in in I think probably the most ambitious sense we are building the new standard that will secure blockchain networks and crypto Thus the whole financial system

>> it's kind of in a you know in in a world I see a couple decades from now I mean that's that is kind of kind of going to be the financial real estate because because of all the advantages that blockchains bring to those systems. Yeah. >> Um to me that's the scale of the problem. That's the scale of the opportunity >> and that's really what we're trying to future proof and future build for >> and yet like so it's you know quantum computers people are aware of them but there is this sort of like sense that like the danger was highlighted a few years ago and then there was a realization that it's like many many years off and then there was almost like a cool down on that fear. I I get the sense like you know oh we got to make it

postquantum this even like in the ZK space like back in 2017 18 people were talking about postquantum ZK but like no one really believed that that would be an issue like teams would come out and be like are our systems postquantum secure and like that kind of selling point which they thought would be relevant kind of wasn't landing now like you're sort of saying like okay so it's come a long way it's getting closer it's more real but is there really a palatable fear. Are people really afraid about this? Because like you're right that like if crypto becomes the rails of finance, then crypto gets broken by postquantum, then finance could be broken in a very scary shocking way. But do you feel like the fear is really

there or is this what you have to kind of show people? Are you the people bringing the fear is the question? >> Yeah, I'm using this I'm using this uh podcast as an opportunity to spread terror uh throughout the world. No, it's both. So, okay. So, one thing I just want to want to point out that's really interesting. So, we have like, you know, we're pretty close with the quantum computing community. We have an adviser who's a quantum researcher at Caltech. >> And, you know, we talked to a number of these folks because we we obviously want to keep pulse development. One thing that I've noticed in in the course of this company that's been very interesting >> is there's a total divergence between the cryptographic community and the quantum computing community. the quantum computing community notably in the past

year has been like this is coming sooner than people think like people like John Prescll who's also at Caltech like these are widely respected experts are like this is actually starting to accelerate and this is happening on the other side in like the blockchain community specifically and I'll pick on the Bitcoin community because they're this is an area where I've seen this the most is like there is actually it's pretty a widely believed notion that quantum computers will never exist can't. So yeah, on the one hand you have like quantum physicists being like this is happening and people who rely on the systems that would otherwise be broken by a quantum computer that just deny that it's even possible. Now what is the truth? How long is the timeline? I mean ultimately these are unknowable

questions. The reason though that I think it's that the fear and I wouldn't even use the word fear. The concern is warranted is because and Connor talked a little bit about some of the other contexts where public key cryptography is used. If you think about crypto, like ownership of a digital asset is entirely defined by the ability to sign a digital signature. That is it. If I can sign a message for your Ethereum wallet, I own your assets. Yeah. Like it like it breaks this thing that is the most fundamental. So even if you think there's a world where it's only a 1% chance that this might happen in the next few years, you need to take action.

And for a variety of reasons, this is not going to be like a switch that blockchains are going to be able to flip. And we'll get into that in a little bit later a little bit later. But I think the fear though, so I would say like like the concern that I see most is from honestly the large institutions and and issuers. >> They see this as a big concern because on the one hand they see quantum computing and it's it developments. On the other hand, they see kind of like a bit of a head in the sand from a lot of protocols, not all. and they're kind of like what in God's name are we going to do if we are ever targeted here and like h so that's honestly where we see the most concern about this problem >> interesting you just kind of talked

about why it's difficult or like how it's different you know Connor used the example of like a browser could just upgrade so that's pretty cool can a blockchain just upgrade and I mean I think has done some work on this they they have some like how to upgrade their network I think when we had Costas on the show, he talked about that like that they've been at least thinking about what it would mean to upgrade their network. But what is Project 11 proposing? Like are you proposing here's how to upgrade to people or are you proposing like here's a scheme to avoid collapse of your system?

>> To to answer the question directly, can these protocols upgrade? The answer is yes. You know, they absolutely can upgrade. >> Unfortunately, that's not the whole answer. There's a little bit more to >> what happens when they upgrade. So, let's pick it apart. What does an upgrade look like? So >> okay, >> so obviously all these protocols are going to be different. So we can, you know, drill down on one or two of them. But you you take something is take the for instance, right? So for them to upgrade, right? So the first thing you need to work out is well let's pick some schemes. Let's go and pick some postquantum schemes. We can get into this later. These schemes come with massive trade-offs. >> We got very lucky with elliptic curves. They're pretty small. They're pretty fast. They're pretty easy to do things with. They have very nice operations

that allow us to do things quite quickly. Postquantum doesn't offer us any of those. we usually have a trade-off somewhere. Either the signatures are massive, signing time is really long, verification time is quite long or it's very complex to implement. So, first thing you got to figure out is okay, which scheme are we going to go for? >> The next thing you got to do is well, how does this scheme fit into our our protocol and at all the layers? So, take something like Ethereum, the first thing they need to consider is well, how will consensus work? How will proof of stake be impacted by this? Can we still maintain block times? Can we still maintain consensus? Can we do signature aggregation? Can we do all these beautiful things that we need to be able to do to run at these scales?

the TLDDR on signature aggregation. It's tricky. You know, these things are pretty hard to do with some of these schemes. They're also very new. The we're kind of for the first time ever in cryptography, which is terrifying for me. The academic papers are going almost straight to production. We're we're effectively saying, "Hey, here's a breakthrough. Let's get that into these systems. Let's start testing this." I prefer the days where RSA was kind of in the 70s and, you know, we still get to use it today. >> Behind a patent. >> Yeah, maybe behind a patent. That's a different a different slightly different. But at least at least we had this time to let these systems you know embed themselves into the world really test these assumptions. So there is this kind of novelty to these algorithms as well.

>> Then you got to go and and figure out okay what is the impact on our chains that's non-trivial. You take something like Salano where they have to maintain such a high transactions per second. You take something like Bitcoin where node size is already massive. What are you going to do if these signatures are all of a sudden 100x the size? Are nodes going to drop off the network because it's too expensive to keep running? And therefore we're going to see some more centralization to miners who can afford that you know added data complexity. And then the big question that seems to always get kicked down the road is well what about the users? You know every single user is going to have to take some key material that they have somewhere hopefully buried in their garden or somewhere very safe. Dig that up for the first time in possibly years

and migrate that key material to this postquantum. We can hopefully all agree that the protocols can do this migration having answered all the questions that I've just posed. Yeah. But they now also have to convince every single user or at least as many users as possible to do this migration as well because it's all well and good if Ethereum support postquantum. But if none of the users take action or know about it or don't know what to do, well then we're going to see this exact same problem. It's as vulnerable as it could possibly be because Ethereum is sitting in a postquantum or a quantum vulnerable wallet. And so this is kind of the dual side of it. There's both the protocols that need to take action, but also every single user for the first time in crypto now have to do some sort of upgrade to

postquantum cryptography. >> That user question and like the actual action that the user has to take. Can we dig into what that is? So, say problems have been solved by the network, which we do think some of these will. I think they're already working on it and they should be able to do it. So they have made an upgrade which preserves the signatures, preserves the way that the system works. Now you have to go I mean what you're saying is like there's no way like unless is there a way to just like automatically upgrade it for all the users? You're shaking your head. No, >> not not your keys, not your crypto.

>> If I can do that for you >> I can do whatever I want. >> Okay. So each individual user has their keys. What are they actually doing? Like when you talk about them needing to upgrade in this scenario where the network has upgraded, do they just have to sign and they get a new set of keys? Like is it a new is it new keys or is it like Yeah. What's what's the actual change? >> Yeah. So in the in the most simplistic and naive kind of how this upgrade might look, it would be the latter. It would be a case of you log into your MetaMask or your Ledger wallet, whatever it might be, and you have to move all of those funds to a brand new fresh. Yes, you must take them all from where they are currently

>> and migrate them to a new wallet. And we'll get into what those new wallets might look like and how they might operate. But effectively, you must go and every single asset you own. If you're on Ethereum, you've got 10 NFTts, 20 different ERC20 tokens, a whole load of base coins on Ethereum, all of that must migrate to this new wallet. And this is spooky for some people. I mean, you take someone like an institutional investor like Black Rockck. They're going to have to go and and open up this wallet that they've been told never touch these keys, never even look for them, never ask about them. >> The depths of Switzerland. >> Exactly. Caverns or something. >> Hopefully broken across multiple places in Switzerland and all sorts of these things.

>> They're going to have to go and pull all these together, do this migration event, and then go and break those keys up and put them back into their taverns in Switzerland. And, you know, there's many reasons why this is kind of scary. I mean, straight away once these migrations happen, it's ripe for more supply chain attacks. People kind of finding, okay, everyone's going to dig up these keys. Is there any sort of interesting things we could do like side channel attacks, be a fake wallet? You know, we're going to see so many attempts of of kind of hijacking this process where all of these key materials need to go back online. They need to be used to migrate and then take those keys offline again. So it isn't just a case of unfortunately clicking a button or you know in the naive sense at least or

or or signing a new you know message to say hey I'm postquantum. It really is a a full list lift and shift in the in the in the raw sense to a brand new wallet. >> Wow. >> Yeah. And the lift and shift I the word I would propose for your listeners just to keep in mind here is dislocation. It's a universal dislocation of all assets they're currently issued minus that small small handful that are on some postquantum layer one somewhere. M complete dislocation and it comes with all the all the trade-offs that the Conor mention, but importantly I want to I want to actually use this to highlight something very important is that if you wait to do this dislocation till after Qday right and this is I think this is kind of like a lot of people's mindsets.

They're like ah quantum's not real yet or maybe it won't be and so I don't have to worry about it. If you wait till after a quantum computer exists >> Q day like I've never heard that Q >> day. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Q day. Yeah. You guys have been in the quantum world for a while. Okay. >> We're pill. Yeah. Um, so if you wait till after that, so there's, so now there's a false quantum computer, a cryptographically relevant quantum computer to use the parlance. >> Well, now that computer can forge a digital signature. So imagine an upgrade path, right, where you're like kind of like Connor described, you're lifting and shifting, you're moving. Like the simplest naive one is like, I'm signing a message to send my funds to a new Postquan wallet.

>> Well, now the CRQC is here. And so they can send your funds to a postquantum wallet, right? And so that like this is what happens. A so after Q day like I said going back to the point that I made is like ECC signatures or digital signatures from ECC >> cease to have meaning about ownership after Qday which is why this is like so back to project 11 what we're doing why we're doing it we're focused heavily on the user migration piece specifically because we think that is many people focus on the protocols obviously because like that's kind of where awareness starts but we think that the biggest problem is going to be dealing with this massive lift and shift

>> and doing it in advance of so even whenever you think Q day is whenever they think quantum computers coming out like we ideally as a space are done with this migration as long as you can imagine that taking at that point and so that's basically why so just a quick quick note on the name like one of like project 11 of the reasons for the 11 is that if you think about it if you kind of backwards you work yourself backwards in time from when a quantum computer exists to everything that has to do that you have to do protocol migration, user migration, all that stuff. >> It's already kind of the 11th hour, honestly. And I think that's why we have to start now to consider these at the bare minimum, consider these problems, but even more than that, build the tools and solutions that solve them. And I

think something interested to double click on what Alex said there that I always find fascinating is >> and it comes back to your first question of, you know, is quantum even coming? Well, unfortunately, the day we wake up to the headline that says, "Great, Google has a quantum computer." A day that I'm both looking forward to and terrified of, it's too late. If if if then is the the day you decide to do this migration to all of the points Alex just said, you can't. We you can't go and release one of these signatures into the me pool because it can be sniped and and your your funds will be stolen. So, it's not so much a case of will it come, I'll wait to see one, and then I'll make a decision. It's got to be proactive.

You must do it before this day. There's some interesting ways within the academic community of how you might do this post QA. It's very non-trivial, very expensive, and actually right into the ZK world, which obviously your listeners might be aware of, >> but to do it the easy way to kind of do the painless version, it cannot happen after that day. So there's it's kind of you can bury your head in the sand and maybe think quantum's not coming, but at least do yourself the favor and and do whatever you can to be a little bit proactive is probably the the message that we try and give people when we speak to about to that question of well if if quantum's not coming or when you know we don't know this date.

>> It doesn't really matter because once it's here it's it's it's going to be too late to do this migration phase. >> That's crazy though that you have to get the users to send funds because what I'm picturing too and I think what you guys are building then is that user product. It's the transfer. It's like basically an interface that would like make it easier or make it clear that somebody's transferring their funds to a postquantum secure version of whatever they are currently in. But is that not an incredible attack space like that particular app? Because like I just think of like little throwback to 2017 when all those ICOs were coming out. One of the best ways to screw it up for people or to steal funds was to and you'd see this all the time. You'd

create a fake website looked exactly like the other one. People would dump their funds in there and it would just steal it. I mean, you see this also with every fishing attack. Every like it's that it's that point where it's like click click. You're supposed to just like do a thing in an app in something that looks a little bit friendlier. You're not looking closely at the contracts you're interfacing with. This is like the ultimate scary UX to me and that's what you're building. >> Yeah. No, I mean that. So, yeah. Okay. >> No pressure. Um Yeah. I mean we actually have so if people are interested so maybe it's a good time to call out the product we've already shipped. So there's a product called yellow pages yellowpages.xyz XYZ people can check it out. And what that is is the Yellow Pages specifically is for Bitcoin.

>> And Bitcoin protocol currently does not support any postquantum signatures. And so what Yellow Pages basically enables you to do is to generate a new key pair that is postquantum. So you're technically you're actually generating two new key pairs, one for each of the two NIST standardized postquantum algorithms and then you're crossigning to basically attesting to owning your Bitcoin address today. Okay, >> so basically it's like your Bitcoin wallet is signing saying, "Hey, these are my new postquantum keys." Your postquantum keys are crossing saying, "Hey, this is my Bitcoin wallet." And so this is like kind of the first step >> for like what a user migration could look like. And and the nice thing about this is let's imagine tomorrow a quantum computer comes online. Well, now if like

money starts to move around and there's like, you know, kind of a debate on like, okay, well, who's whose assets are whose, now you at least have an ability to say, hey, I can produce this postquantum signature. >> Yes. >> And I tied this postquantum signature to this address. So now any adversary has to do the same. And so, and then, you know, obviously, like I said, this isn't this isn't a deep solution to the problem because Bitcoin hasn't upgraded, but at least you have something that's not totally arbitrary saying like, "Oh, I bought this Bitcoin on Coinbase last year. it's definitely mine. You know, something like that. So, that's what Yellow Pages solves for. But to your point, I mean, this is extremely sensitive cryptographic interface. And by the way, like I'm sure Project 11 won't be the single point of all asset migration, right? Wa are going to have

to do this. Like all existing crypto interfaces are going to have to figure this out, but like just like with shipping any wallet or any cryptographic protocol, like this is not something you just roll out on a weekend. >> This is like first you have to develop it. Second, you have to test it. Third, you have to audit it. Fourth, you actually kind of want it to be around for a couple years, make sure it's not broken. >> This is like going back to like the 11th hour thing, like this is not a turn on the dime thing. And so, yeah, but that's fundamentally I think this user interface problem is for us like one of the like the thing we focus on because just to give another example in terms of the time that it's going to take. So, Bitcoin for example, so based on the

block size and block time for Bitcoin, you can have a basically understand an understanding of the capacity of the network TPS. If you want to migrate every Bitcoin UTXO, you need to shut down the entire network for 70 to 74 days. So this is based on some academic work from one of the researchers on our team. So like literally nothing on Bitcoin happens except moving UTXOs from peer to postquantum. That's a 74day pro process. Bestcase scenario. So obviously you're not going to get the best case scenario. You probably be lucky to get 10% of that which means you're talking about 750 days. So that's even if you have all the interfaces and everything all built out, you're talking about like 2 years basically to actually facilitate the migration.

>> WA you just mentioned some work. Is that public? Can we see that? The 74 days. >> Yeah. Yeah, we can we can give you the link. Yeah, that was uh one of our, you know, a person on our team, Joseph Kernney. He's a actually his PhD was in postquantum blockchains and uh and has done all this work and simulated it. So yeah, we'll share that. >> Cool. So, I mean, with that scenario, it just sounds like, well, we're headed towards a cliff and we're screwed. But I feel like there's got to be solutions that you're thinking about there. Like, which networks, the ones that you've mentioned so far is like Bitcoin, Salana, Ethereum, but are you is project 11 focused on Bitcoin? Cuz like the product you just described is like a Bitcoin product. Are you focused on a little bit of a broader kind of

blockchain? Doesn't it get complicated when you go to different because each one's different? >> Yeah. So, Yellow Pages was oriented to Bitcoin as as I mentioned. So, it was kind of a specifically for it was a it was a Bitcoin product effectively, you know. So, what is our focus? I mean, our focus is really at the public key cryptography layer. And you mentioned like there's complexity across those thousands of chains, but again, because this is so foundational, there's really only a handful of public key crypto schemes that anyone builds on. >> Okay.

>> And there's only like two that have been standardized by N. So you kind of have like there's like I don't know three or four elliptic curve schemes EDSA, CDSA, BLS that everyone like uses for public for the signatures and then everyone's going to go to these two SLHDs, MLDDSA or maybe one of the variants. So it actually because it's that level it's actually pretty simple. Like for to make it concrete, Bitcoin and Ethereum use the same elliptic curves. So really like your Bitcoin address and your Ethereum address are just points on this elliptic curve. The fact that one is Bitcoin and one is Ethereum is just like a bunch of conventions that we apply to those

elliptic curve points to call them one versus the other. But mathematically speaking, they're the exact same thing, >> right? And so there's this universality to it which makes which and again this is directly tied to just how fundamental these things are to blockchains. But then but for us what we realized is like if you solve this problem for one >> you will catch a few. >> Well again these like they're not wildly different schemes. Everyone's basically using ECC and everyone has to go to like these handful. So it's like it kind of looks it's it's pretty similar. Now of course in the implementation there's absolutely complexity cuz all these things you know there's there's different encodings and blah blah. So I don't want to underwrite that but it's certainly a universal problem and the solution because it's so fundamental will also be somewhat interchangeable

between networks. Let's let's talk about like the SUI work because they came out with a paper recently actually I think and I and I think Kostas had mentioned it on the show as well which was like this work on migrating specifically the SU network and you're familiar with this I'm assuming they're talking about migrating the SWU network to a postquantum secure cryptographic scheme something different what is it and would that be applicable to other networks as well that we know >> yeah so I guess something we probably should have mentioned first is you know what is the quantum threat because it this will be helpful as we dive into how different networks are approaching it.

So really when we talk about the quantum threat there's there's two algorithms that always come up. There's Shor's algorithm and there's Grover's and you mentioned you know this is probably mentioned before on some of those previous episodes but there's there's largely two algorithms. Shor's algorithm is is the one that reverses a public key back to its private key. Right? That's the scary one. That's the one that you know you me knowing Anna's address from her Bitcoin wallet I can then go and get her private key and and then I steal your funds. Grover's algorithm is a little bit different. Grover's algorithm is is more impactful on symmetric key cryptography and hashes. So the ability to reverse a hash function or to find an AES key or whatever it might be. The the the immediate impact from quantum is shores. Shores is what's going to arrive

sooner. It's got kind of somewhat easier. I'll say that quote unquote because I'm sure quantum physicists will hate me saying this, but it's got a much easier runtime within the quantum algorithm space. It's it's going to be the one that arrives in the next 3 to 8 years based on the latest kind of evidence. Grovers is 10, 20, 30, even maybe 50 years away. So that helps us also then decide okay what do we need to care about right now where where are the weaknesses in the system >> although would you want to wait like would you if you don't fix all of them don't you end up just having to do these migrations like every 5 years >> and one thing we've we've learned from the last year page 11 is these protocols don't like migrations so let's do one and let's not have to worry about it but

absolutely you know to your point >> but I get it there's some part of it that's more pressing and and needs to be solved earlier >> exactly that and that nuance is helpful because and this will will help motivate the what the work you're doing So hash functions are considered safe, you know, they're they're not quantum vulnerable right now. So really then within these systems and Alex kind of touch on this that all these protocols, you know, can be the same. I mean, Alex is going to start the war now to say that Bitcoin and Ethereum is all the same thing because of the same points on the curve, but largely >> spicy takes. I'm here for the spicy takes. >> Absolutely. But it's it's largely true. So you know, there's there's going to be hash functions in there. There's going to be some public key cryptography

operations in there. knowing where the kind of weakest point is being public cryptography then we can kind of really zone in on that one part of the protocol and say this is what we need to fix. So one interesting aspect that some of the EDSA chains are doing like like Zooie what they're doing is they're saying well because hash functions are safe how the kind of private key generation works is you usually have these 12 or 24 words that you write down very securely you you you keep them really safe they're put through a hash function in order to create your private key okay and that private key then goes on to generate your public key well with Shor's algorithm knowing your public key I can get back to your private key but very importantly I can't go back from your private key back to those words. Those

words are out of reach for me with just Shore's algorithm. I would need a quantum computer capable of running Grover's algorithm which is >> which is further off >> 20 30 40 years ago. >> So the secret key so the keywords or what do they call it? The secret >> the seed phrase. Yeah. >> So the seed phrase is like safer than the private key in this context >> from from an attack from a quantum computer. Absolutely. >> Which seems very counterintuitive because the seed phrase looks so silly but yes. >> Yeah, it looks silly. It looks like I could guess those words. ass are more safe because they're fed through this one hash function private key material. So now the the kind of idea is well what we could do is we could just not use any of these new postquantum algorithms instead and I'm

going to vure into ZK world where you and Alex have plenty more knowledge on this space than me. But if I can have some sort of zero knowledge proof that I know those words >> that will eventually lead to my address after I put them through the various stages that are required to get to that address. Well then I can still we can still maintain the same system because the system all the system relies on is some knowledge of a secret. That secret is currently that private key, what's what is spit out from the hash function. But there's no reason that secret can't just be one step further back, which is that seed phrase. >> And that's that's some of the work that they're doing is, you know, and it kind of only works for the EDSA protocols just by the way they derive that path is

very well defined. It's very well speced out. Unfortunately, in Ethereum and Bitcoin, we didn't have that at the beginning. So, it's a little bit diverse. Different wallets do it differently. You know, Ledger might do it different from MetaMask, from Phantom, from the Bitcoin CLI, which a lot of people still use. So we don't have the the luxury of it being a very well- definfined path. But in these newer chains that rely on EDSA, we do we have this very well structured. So this idea of well we don't need any public e cryptography. We can just go all in on zero knowledge. Now and I'll let Alex maybe speak to it more. It's definitely not trivial to to do this. There's a lot of hash functions involved. There's it's a huge amount of operations within that CK. But ultimately that's that's one of the the kind of ideas of ignoring all of

the postquantum algorithms and saying well we could just go straight and all in on this CK space. M >> yeah and I I'll just add I think like that's a technique that helps to solve the problem that we at project 11 may very well apply in context for these networks right so this but you know this is the difference between like theory and practice right so this theoretically works for this subset of chains practically speaking you still have to build the thing so cost I mean it's like it's great cost sort of paper but like Anna if you want to like do this today there's not like a way because no one's built a thing to implement the paper right so you know and obviously there's you know, we don't need to retread the number of protocols where it's like it seems easy, ah is hard, you know, ZK,

>> but eight years later. >> Yeah. And actually, maybe it's worth just spending a couple minutes talking about the impact to zero knowledge cryptography specifically. >> Oh, okay. Um because actually there is a family of ZK algorithms that a lot of people are talking about as as potentially a solution not only you know that will be kind of exist in the postcon world but also might be able to be used for authorization >> right and those are starks right so starks I'm sure >> hash based >> the hashbased yes exactly the popularly known as as starks this you know hashbased snarks whatever right so anything based on codes or hashes like that is secure in the postconqu world and specific specifically what do we

what do we mean by secure here is soundness right so are you able to to create a false proof yes or no and then zero knowledge is it private yes or no now obviously as we know in most of these zk systems that are deployed today privacy is like the less used aspect most of them you know it's about compression and then it's about just the soundness to ensure that that proof is valid right so that's like all the zk rollups they rely on this right so starks because they rely on hash functions they will be secure into the future. And so that's one of the reasons why if you if you you know look at the Ethereum folk, the Ethereum road map and and Ethereum to their great credit has has been very on top of this uh postquantum, you know, promoting awareness of it and then starting to

think about how they're going to do that. Like Starks are one of the things they're thinking about because of their postquantum security, right? For, you know, rolling up or batching transactions or for aggregating signatures, etc. Now take like Groth 16 style snarks. What breaks? Well, >> they're elliptic curve based. Yeah, >> exactly. They're based on elliptic curves. And that's one of the reasons why, by the way, like Connor mentioned, you know, we don't need to get into all the weeds, but like Connor mentioned that ECC has like nice properties. That's one of the reasons why GR 16 snarks are constant in size and constant in verification time. It's directly related to the nice properties of elliptic curves. So, okay. So, because elliptic curves are broken here, what happens here? Well, you can potentially

produce a false proof if you have a quantum computer and depending on how the pro, you know, the proof systems are implemented. You might be able to actually break the privacy retroactively. So, like Zcash transactions, you might be able to see after the fact. >> Wow. Into the shielded pool >> into the shielded pool. Right now, that's not universal like it the that aspect of like and this is like in the postquantum broader cryptographic parliament. This is called harvest now, decrypt later. >> Wow. It's just like get the data because eventually you'll be able to look at it, >> right?

>> And so this is by the way like what I just described like that's why governments around the world today largely are like pushing their encrypted system. They're they're they're pushing for post cryptography for this exact reason because you can imagine like >> the central intelligence agency like hey if we're not like if someone can harvest now decrypt later all of our communications that would be bad even if it's a while from now. So, but those are the two aspects of soundness and zero knowledges. So, soundness for all the EC all the EC based snarks breaks straight away. So, that basically post Qday in the same way you won't be able to trust like a pre-quantum bitcoin or ethereum transaction you won't be able to trust a proof from an EC based proof system.

Now, obviously that's like that's maybe the most extreme version of that statement but but bottom line is they will basically be obsolete once a quantum computer exists. I mean, we we have on the show just recently talked about the quantum security of hashbased snarks. And it's funny we we you're saying snarks like to me they're the same thing now. Snarks and snarks are kind of merged because there's so many like hashbased snarks. But anyway, or they add like a fry based recursion. So a hashbased recursion somewhere in the in the flow. But yeah, we were talking about hashbased. We've been talking a lot about lises too also postquantum.

also very early like I don't know if they're and we I I think it's not clear yet if the if they're the winner. I think hashbased hashes are just like better understood in a way. Well actually lattises have been around for a long time. I shouldn't say that but anyway the lattis based snarks are new. >> Yeah I mean zk friendly hash functions like Poseidon >> are also new. >> They are new. So this is like lattises have been around for like 25 yearsish and people are like that's kind of like new and then but then we also have Poseidon. I mean this back gets back to Connor's earlier point like this is and this is actually maybe like a really exciting thing about the field of cryptography is like I feel like in some ways it was kind of boring >> seems like it e until until

>> spicy spicy takes if Dan Benet listens to this podcast I'm sure he'll really have a word with me he'll have a take on my take but anyway no but like especially now that all of these systems are basically going to become obsolete like there is this kind of you can't take for granted anything anymore is secure and so therefore there's a a lot more reason to explore what otherwise you would never explore. >> And so I think that's I guess what when I mean boring I mean like it's actually it's not boring but it's this this is a really exciting era cuz there's a lot more opportunity to do things like lattises. I mean honestly without the quantum as a motivation lattis would have kind of just been an a curiosity.

Yeah. >> You know so I think that's kind of the that's that's I think an aspect of this that I see as an opportunity. >> That's interesting. I mean but here so what you're you know just to sort of recap you were just sharing sort of the this is like quantum threat to ZK so quantum threat to ZK's primarily the ECC elliptic curve cryptography based snark type things that yeah hearken back more to the n what is it 2016 sort of 2015 like when the zero c like all the zero cache paper all those initial protocols came out so that's zk specific yes but going back to the sort of SWU solution. They're I guess they're using like a hashbased ZK system to prove something about a blockchain seed

phrase. Is that correct? Just to to clarify, Connor, what you had shared there. >> So, as far as I'm aware, I read the paper a while ago. It didn't actually specify what the ZK how the ZK would work internally. The assumption would be it would be postquantum. >> I think it makes Yeah. Yeah. I would hope weird if it isn't. >> I would hope, but I believe like I didn't see in the paper itself. It's great. It's it's really it's a great paper but it didn't specify necessarily how the internals would work but yeah the assumption there would be it would be some sort of hashbased snark and it would have to be if it's if it's as you say if it's going to be doing the postquantum piece I mean yeah so ultimately you know that's exactly right so it's it's effectively well we can use

this proof of knowledge of these words the same way we could use proof of knowledge of a private key which unfortunately now is is quantum vulnerable so >> for me it's a little bit of kind of replacing some complexity tax with a different complexity tax I mean pick your poison you can go PQ lises or you can go the zk over a seed lead phrase. I I personally have an opinion and I I'll I know I'm on a ZK podcast, but I would probably I'd probably go and and do something a bit more conservative around, you know, postquantum, even if it's a postquantum hashbased scheme or a lattice scheme. I is a little bit easier. We have them. They're standardized at the N level. They've got a bit of attention now at this point. A lot of people are trying to break them, not just within blockchains. you know,

they've they've had a good few years now, not quite long enough, but you know, I think the ZK piece to solve it, I see it as as a really nice fallback where let's imagine you didn't upgrade on time. Well, now the only way to prove knowledge of your private key would be some sort of proof of your words. I would much rather though, that's kind of the fallback after QA. before Qday, let's get as many people to to use these signatures with these private keys that they can still reveal safely >> and and let's migrate to more of a standardized protocol than then everyone, you know, I can't imagine every single wallet trying to do their own ZK proof over a seed. It's not exactly an easy solution either.

>> ZK is getting faster though, but yeah, >> it is. >> So, just to continue on the the sweet story though, so you sort of said like the solution that they had pres presented would potentially help some blockchains but not all. So, what is the groupings of like do I'm sure you've probably scanned this like Ethereum and Bitcoin are similar. Does it almost have to do with like the generation when it came out? Like all the all the blockchains that came out in 2021 are usually like using some particular and what are they using exactly? Is it an algorithm? Is it a consensus thing? Like where is the point of failure?

>> It's it's pretty much spot on. It's the the newer generations of these chains tended tended to use EDDDSA and there was multiple reasons why. >> What is EDDDSA? Like what part of the stack is that? >> It's effectively a different signature type that's still it's still elliptic curve based. So it's still a quantum vulnerable. >> Okay. >> It's a different curve type than what we the what Bitcoin and Ethereum use which is ECDSA. >> So it can use a different curve and funny enough Bitcoin actually didn't use a different curve. They kept their old curve and they kind of retrofitted EDDDSAR signatures onto this. But effectively it's it's a whole new elliptic curve. It has really nice properties and I believe the reason it wasn't actually rolled out during Bitcoin and Ethereum's time it was under patent at the time. So it couldn't even

have been used if we if they wanted to. Okay. >> Bitcoin actually rolled it out when they migrated or they they released the taproot protocol and they actually started supporting a little bit more of these nor signatures. Ethereum something similar and then a lot of the newer newer generation chains they went directly for these. The main benefit you get is you can do signature aggregation quite easily with these with the EDDDSA schemes which you can't quite do as easily with the ECDSA schemes. So really the the break point is is is those newer kind of newer generation chains tended to to go that route. >> So it's on the signature front, it's the signatures themselves. It's not the consensus.

>> No. >> Okay. >> Very much so on the signature. You could use those signatures as part of your consensus protocol, but it's the it's the root signature. how how you're signing what the operation is you're doing when you're proving knowledge of your private key? >> Sort of side question here, but like do quantum computers also break consensus like the puzzle of the of the Bitcoin like the proof of work like the thing that you're running? I think actually I think we talked about that in that Orsa show where it was like all of a sudden like someone's getting all the blocks or something. >> I'll give my take on this. So in theory, yes. In practice, no. I think so.

Grover's algorithm is what you need to basically find the pre-image. >> It's the later one. Okay, >> it's the later one. And it's worth noting that like resource estimates that you you could find a lot of these academic papers. We can link you a few in the show notes, but like the quantum computer that you would need to build to run this in like a realistic time frame for a Bitcoin block, but the amount of hash power is like astronomical in size. So it's like yeah sure it could happen but practically speaking like compared to you know like just to make this concrete for in terms of just number of cubits which is one of the many dimensions of a quantum computer let's just take that >> like a quantum computer to run shores or sorry Grover's algorithm to break bitcoin consensus would have to be like

billions and billions of cubits >> in size >> and how big are we at now? >> Well so the largest quantum computer in terms of number of cubits is 6,000 >> right so that we're a little ways off is is 6,000 cubits. >> Okay. You know, and it's it's not to say it's not going fast. Like the state of the art was a,000 to be in the year. Now it's 6,000. So it's 6x to just 10 months basically. And so but that said like and shor's algorithm like the the resource estimate, you know, s the latest estimate, by the way, this constantly is going down as algorithmic, you know, tricks are discovered is a million cubits. So it's like the difference between breaking Bitcoin consensus is like billions and billions and then the public key stuff is like a million and we're at 6,000. So it's like, you know,

>> you're getting into like a little over 100x and you're getting close >> no but a little little over 100x what we have now and you're getting close shores. >> Yeah. And and one of the reasons for that is is that like Shor's algorithm is really special. It's special for a very specific reason. It's the only problem like like the discrete log problem which is the basis for ECC all publicraphy. It's the only problem that we know a quantum computer can do much much faster than a classical counterpart. It's proven. There is no other problem that a quantum computer is provably able to do better than a classical computer. In fact, Grovers only gives you a polomial speed up. So, it's like not very fast.

That's this is why like a lot of the like the proposed changes to like Bitcoin for example be like, "Oh, well, just make it SHA 512 instead of Shaw 256." then you're totally fine because it's it's like you know the degree of improvement that you're getting is so narrow. Whereas with shores it's an exponential speed up. So that means even if you like I know we're not talking about RSA but let's just take RSA for a second here where it's like RSA 20048 you know even if you even if you double the number of bits that doesn't buy you hardly anything because shores get so much better so much faster. And now linking this back now to the quantum computing industry. This is another reason why this is a really interesting time. You have a quantum computing industry which in the last 3 months

alone has seen about $5 billion of capital going into it. >> Wa. Not quite AI money. >> Not quite AI money. But if you just look at like basically if you just look at the chart from like money going into this like people view this as kind of the next hot new tech thing. >> Cool. But you can just you look at the potential uses for a quantum computer other than crypto analysis and just like I described with Grovers, it's kind of a you got to squint pretty hard to see something in the near term. >> Oh, >> but you have let's for example Satoshi's Bitcoin sitting there that with a relatively small quantum computer you could potentially get and that would maybe earn you some money. And by the

way, this isn't a theoretical thing like like people have talked about this like like again you don't even have to like be in the rooms where these conversations happen. You can just look at Shor's algorithm is relatively easy. It's going to be the first Barbie pier and the money you make from Shor's algorithm is >> good >> on blockchains like yeah it's like yeah it's just blockchain this it's like the digital assets. So it's like you those two things are going to intersect right. So >> maybe and like I'd like if it's okay and I'd like to use the opportunity the last couple minutes here. I want to cuz people may have listened to this podcast at this point. They're like, "This is all scary. I'm terrified." But okay, Alex and Connor, Project 11, like what are you guys actually doing? What is the solution here?

>> So, you were talking about the EDDDSA. I wanted to ask what you're changing it to like I don't think you've actually talked about this and how do you even decide that? So, yes, tell me what you're doing, but include that somewhere in your answer. >> So, what are we doing, right? Okay, very high level. We need to build new foundations for all blockchains. What does that mean? We need to implement first and foremost these postquantum algorithms. So I'm going to start at the most like the deepest layer and then work our way up to kind of the product to describe this. So first we need to implement these algorithms. This is something that we're doing we're we're taking the N standardized algorithms but we're customizing them specifically for the blockchain use case and this was actually we recently released some work called sweet B that we did in concert

with Zuko and JP both cryptographers authors of the Blake hash function. What that is is basically it uses Blake in the internals of some of these NIST standardized algorithms, namely MLDDSA. Now, why do that? Cuz signing and verifying become a little bit faster. >> And so that means the tradeoffs that you have to make in the protocol at the protocol level become less painful, right? Your TPS doesn't have to go down quite as much. Like your cost for proving for ZK isn't quite as high, right? So that's like making these marginal improvements at the basic level scheme is something that we're very passionate about because this ultimately will be the foundation of everything that comes on top. Now on top of this

what do we need to do? >> Like I said broadly speaking we're focused on the migration of user assets. The first thing we need to do is we need to decouple the security of assets from the protocol migration timelines cuz it like you can as you mentioned a second ago or earlier on the show there's a huge window of vulnerability here if everyone does if if people do this migration wrong and protocols could potentially break themselves by trying to rush this. So you basically need to give protocols the time to do this safely, but that doesn't mean you can just assets be stolen. So you need to basically create a way to secure assets today. So that's like really the first thing we're building. The first product is something that as an ability for you

to like it's a it's a vault. It'll be it'll be a wallet on Ethereum implemented using account abstraction that basically lets you for any EVM based asset >> directly secure it with postquantum cryptography today. And that like I said relies on account abstraction. Account abstraction means you can implement this postquantum signatures at the smart contract layer and use that as the authorization rather than you know just a like an ECDSA signature. So that will work for any EVM issued asset and it will work for anything that you can bridge over to that chain. So Bitcoin for example, it would work for WBTC. Now you'd still be you'd still be exposed to a risk if the bridge for example that you like relied upon wasn't doing all the right things to ensure that it was

postquam secure but theoretically that is a solvable problem right so what we're building is the first and only vault to secure your existing assets today that's thing one thing two is now we need to build a map so we need to take the idea of yellow pages map old to new now we need to globalize that across the entire space >> old to new bitcoin address old and new. Ethereum address old and new. Sooie address old to new. >> But are you still moving funds in this scenario? Like do you still have to send funds to the new address in every single case?

>> Every case you have to do this. But one thing like one of the reasons why this map is important. Smart contracts. Smart contracts consist of two things logic and state. The logic is like let's just take USDC. It's like okay like we have an admin key and we can mint money and like you know we can freeze things and but otherwise just an ERC20 token and that's the state. the state is like Anna's ETH address bounce. >> What happens to them? Smart contracts have to redeploy. >> Okay, >> so you have to undeploy and then redeploy. But then you've now you've like secured your logic with some postquantum authorization stuff, but then you're left with a problem. You're like, well, I have Anna's state, but her address is pre is like classical. And even if you've generated a new key pair and you've moved your assets, it's not

like Circle has like your email address. They can't like, hey, tell us your new address. They need a global reference to be able to know, hey, where it's like a phone book. This is why we actually picked the yellow pages as name. They need to look up your old address and they need to know where to where to route your new b give you the postquantum version of USDC. >> So that's what this mapping layer does as a as a cool side effect to this. >> What this enables us to do is create something very similar to the DNS for the over for the for the internet. Like when I go to google.com, I don't have to memorize google.com's IP address. That's the whole point of the DNS or the domain name system, right? And so this actually kind of by accident, this this necessity

to migrate assets to postquantum creates the opportunity to make a better UX. Let me give a very concrete example like this name space that I'm describing can have a human readable name kind of like ENS but global and then underneath that human readable name there's like a hierarchy of different keys. Yeah. >> Pre-quantum, postquantum, for bitcoin, for eth, for sooie. You can actually decide for yourself customize per network when you want to actually go over to postquantum. In addition, if I'm sending you money, you can imagine a world where I just have to send it to your human readable name. Or if you and you can even go beyond just crypto.

Think about how cryptography is used on the web. like a DKIM certificate for your email address includes a public key and you can you know and there's a way and and like that can basically also be included in this potential you know postquantum DNS scheme and now I can just send you USDC to your email and by the way I don't have to care or worry about whether you have your USDC on Salana on Ethereum anywhere like it just it routes automatically >> wow that becomes like a totally different pro like now it's like oh this is like opening up >> well it's it's The reason these two things are connected is going back to that word dislocation. Everything has to move anyway. So if everyone's got to get up out of their chairs, you might as well use the opportunity to make this UX

like it should have been in the first place. But no one built it intent like all these chains sprung up in individually. No one built that intentionally. But now there's an opportunity to do this in a different way and solve the postquantum problem or the quantum uh vulnerability at the same time. So those are the things that we're doing. We're building the fundamental new protocols that hopefully will become the standard for all future blockchains and financial rails. We're building the custody solution to decouple protocol migration timeline for massive security. And we're building this global name space which basically enables everyone to map prequantum to postquantum and gives you a big UX benefit as a side effect.

>> Are you also building across all those chains or is that some sort of future vision that eventually this DNS could be used that way or are you still focused on a per network kind of product? So the DNS is meant to be global. What is it? Like I say, it's just a mapping. So I think the way we're thinking to implement initially is just as an Ethereum smart contract, but really it could live it could live anywhere. And by the way, it could be its own chain. Like you know, if you've got if you remember Handshake, Handshake was like kind of this honestly it didn't have the postquantum aspect, but Handshake was a layer 1 blockchain that just served as a as a mapping, right? So I think you know at the end of the day we're more interested in solving the problems than

theoretically creating the most elegant solution. I mean ideally we do both but but I think simple first and so that's why we're going to start you know because it's only a mapping it can live really on any smart contract platform probably Ethereum is the easiest one to start with and then we kind of go from there. >> Wow. The way to migrate the signatures the something and then the DNS level. >> Yeah. >> Can you just list those three levels again? The three layers. So, it's the signatures, the cryptographic protocol for digital signatures themselves. It's the custody layer that makes sure that the protocols can be on their own timelines, but your asset can be safe.

>> The custody layer. This is the vaults. >> Yes, exactly. That's right. It's the vault that secures the asset itself. And then there's the global namespace that maps basically pre-toquantum and then gives you this nicer UX of like I don't have to think about your ETH address. I can just set it to your name. Wow. basically >> sounds very ambitious and exciting. >> Yeah. >> Very cool. >> You know, you know me. This is what I wake up and love doing every day. >> So, just one small thing. Is there any sort of Fallout references happening in any of what you're doing? Because Project 11, the vaults, I don't know, for some reason I'm getting very like Fallout vibes, but anyway, >> that's a cool that's a cool brand idea cuz I think we have a rerun. That's a

rerun coming. Yeah. Great. There wasn't, but now there definitely is. >> Yeah. Doesn't all the vaults in Fallout have like a number too, don't they? >> They do. Exactly. That's why that's sort of striking me as >> Yeah. >> And 11th hour and it's kind of like a similar like, you know, stress. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Well, thank you for revisiting this problem space kind of for our audience. I feel like the threat of quantum computers kind of comes and goes in people's minds, but I think it's good to keep it top of mind here, especially as we're seeing this acceleration of adoption. like you said when it was just a niche thing ah it could be theoretical but when people are actually using it it becomes quite quite scary for it to come undone at the same time it's nice to hear that the sort of the solutions that

you're thinking of do you know if there's anyone else in your comp competitive space like are there other teams that are looking at that >> I mean I think what makes us unique is that a lot of folks tend to start from the protocol level and they're like we're going to build the new quantum secure Bitcoin or we're going to build a new quantum secure layer one and it's everyone just be come here and look I I think that is a viable approach but our view is that people would rather secure their existing assets not move them to some new chain now I mean this dislocation is real and so look there's a possibility that somebody that this you know that get started from the protocol first could be a red approach and I I I imagine a lot of those chains will see upticks but that's not our

focus directly but that most the other folks working on postquantum tend to be of that flavor >> got They're like releasing new chains basically. >> Well, thank you both for coming on. Connor, great to get to know you and to hear about sort of your research and your thinking around this. Alex, always a pleasure to have you on. Very exciting to hear about the new direction and project 11. Yeah, thanks to both of you. >> Thanks so much. It's great to be here. Thank you very much. >> And I want to say thank you to the podcast team, Henrik, Rachel, Tanya, and Hector. And to our listeners, thanks for listening.