# Project Eleven Awards 1 BTC Q-Day Prize for Largest Quantum Attack on Elliptic Curve Cryptography to Date

- Link: https://www.thailand-business-news.com/pr-news/project-eleven-awards-1-btc-q-day-prize-for-largest-quantum-attack-on-elliptic-curve-cryptography-to-date
- Published: 2026-04-24T20:00:00+07:00
- Author: PR Newswire

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_Researcher breaks 15-bit ECC key on publicly accessible quantum hardware in a 512x
jump from the previous public demonstration._

NEW YORK, April 24, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — [Project Eleven](https://edge.prnewswire.com/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=4672294-1&h=2677615944&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.projecteleven.com%2F&a=Project+Eleven)
today awarded the Q-Day Prize, a one Bitcoin bounty, to Giancarlo Lelli for breaking
a 15-bit elliptic curve key on a publicly accessible quantum computer. The result
is the largest public demonstration to date of the attack class that threatens Bitcoin,
Ethereum, and over $2.5 trillion in ECC-secured digital assets.

"The resource requirements for this type of attack keep dropping, and the barrier
to running it in practice is dropping with them," said Alex Pruden, CEO of Project
Eleven. "The winning submission came from an independent researcher working on cloud-
accessible hardware. No national lab, no private chip. It shows that tangible progress
is possible and highlights the urgency to migrate to post-quantum cryptography sooner
rather than later. Google [just committed](https://edge.prnewswire.com/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=4672294-1&h=2693185738&u=https%3A%2F%2Fblog.google%2Finnovation-and-ai%2Ftechnology%2Fsafety-security%2Fcryptography-migration-timeline%2F&a=just+committed)
to being quantum-secure by 2029. The window to get ahead of this is closing."

[Lelli derived](https://edge.prnewswire.com/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=4672294-1&h=1398555185&u=https%3A%2F%2Fgithub.com%2FGiancarloLelli%2Fquantum&a=Lelli+derived)
a private key from its public key across a search space of 32,767 using a variant
of Shor’s algorithm. Shor’s targets the Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem(
ECDLP), the math underlying the digital signature schemes securing Bitcoin, Ethereum,
and most blockchains.

Quantum attacks on ECC have moved from theory to practice over the last seven months.
Steve Tippeconnic’s 6-bit demonstration in September 2025 was the first public break
on quantum hardware. Lelli’s 15-bit result extends it by a factor of 512.

Theoretical resource estimates for a full 256-bit attack, the scale Bitcoin operates
at, have fallen sharply over the same period. Google’s April 2026 whitepaper put
the requirement at under 500,000 physical qubits. A subsequent paper from Caltech
and Oratomic brought that figure as low as 10,000 qubits in a neutral-atom architecture.

Lelli’s result is the practical counterpart to those optimizations. The distance
from 15 bits to 256 bits is large, but the gap is increasingly viewed as an engineering
problem and not a fundamental physics problem.

Roughly [6.9 million](https://edge.prnewswire.com/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=4672294-1&h=2609749367&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.projecteleven.com%2Fbitcoin-risq-list&a=6.9+million)
Bitcoin sit in wallets whose public keys are visible on-chain, exposing them to 
quantum attack. All blockchains using ECC share similar risks with vulnerable assets.

Project Eleven is developing its next challenge, focused on the intersection of 
frontier AI models and quantum cryptanalysis.

Alex Pruden is available for interview

**About Project ElevenProject Eleven builds resilient infrastructure and tooling
for the post-quantum era. The company develops scalable solutions that strengthen
security across a rapidly evolving quantum threat landscape. With deep expertise
in cryptography, blockchain, and financial systems, Project Eleven bridges advanced
post-quantum research with real-world implementations that prepare the digital asset
ecosystem for the future. For more information, visit [www.projecteleven.com](https://edge.prnewswire.com/c/link/?t=0&l=en&o=4672294-1&h=4083557751&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.projecteleven.com%2F&a=www.projecteleven.com).

**Media ContactsAubrey Strobel / Elena Nisonoff, Halcyon Communications
[projecteleven@halcyonpr.xyz](https://www.thailand-business-news.com/pr-news/projecteleven@halcyonpr.xyz)

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