quant

EIP-8450 proposal update, intended to introduce a quantum-resistant public key registration mechanism for Ethereum validators, using a hash-based cryptographic scheme, including leanXMSS keys and VRF tree roots.The update clarifies that the registration and replacement of quantum-resistant keys are authorized by BLS signature keys, and sets a replacement delay of at least one Epoch and a replay protection mechanism; this proposal is currently still in the Draft stage and has not yet been deployed.

CryptoQuant founder Ki Young Ju stated that the ETF engine has hardly operated this year, with net inflows close to zero from the beginning of the year to now, yet Bitcoin has only dropped 7%. In the context of weak ETF demand while prices remain strong, the likelihood of OG whales or miners selling off in large quantities seems low; those who wanted to sell may have already done so.Ki Young Ju expects that once the uncertainty of the U.S. midterm elections dissipates and ETF capital inflows resume, bullish momentum will return.

Muneeb Ali, co-founder of the Bitcoin Layer2 network Stacks, stated in Cointelegraph's Chain Reaction podcast that concerns surrounding quantum computing are suppressing institutional funds from entering Bitcoin, and the network needs a credible security upgrade roadmap to restore investor confidence. He mentioned, "Quantum concerns have set a ceiling on Bitcoin's growth," believing that this uncertainty may lead risk-averse institutional investors to delay large purchases until developers provide a clear path to quantum resistance. Stacks is a Bitcoin Layer2 network aimed at introducing smart contracts and decentralized applications to Bitcoin, and Ali is a co-founder of the project.Ali warned that if developers fail to make substantial progress in quantum resistance by 2028, Bitcoin could enter a riskier phase. He pointed out that upgrades typically take years to implement, and users will need additional time to migrate their assets to new addresses. Citing guidance from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), he views 2030 as a target node for transitioning to quantum resistance and believes advancements in artificial intelligence could accelerate the development of quantum computers, potentially moving this timeline up to 2029.Ali acknowledged that some Bitcoin supporters believe the quantum threat is distant and that concerns are exaggerated, but he thinks that the very disagreement over the urgency of the threat, in the absence of a credible upgrade roadmap, will undermine investor confidence. He also stated that sufficiently powerful quantum computers are more likely to emerge from large research laboratories rather than unknown attackers, and companies like Google and Microsoft lack the motivation to steal Bitcoin, but the quantum security threat will impact the entire crypto industry, "If Bitcoin is hit, all downstream projects will be affected." Currently, developers are exploring protective solutions, with StarkWare stating in September that researchers reduced the computational cost of preparing an experimental quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction by 79% after a week of optimization challenges. This solution does not require modifications to Bitcoin's consensus rules, but the cost reduction has only been validated in benchmark tests.

According to market news, Intel (INTC.O) will acquire the quantum startup Classiq for approximately $2.3 billion.

AI Physical Superintelligence (PSI) announced new progress on five long-standing unresolved quantum information problems, leveraging models such as GPT-6 Astra and Claude, and has published papers, proof codes, and verification materials. During the research process, physicists were responsible for guidance and verification, while the relevant models participated in the derivation. The team also had AI Agents from Codex and Claude Code write Lean formal proofs, which were checked by computers to verify the validity of the reasoning.One of the studies demonstrated that in a specific quantum field, quantum entanglement still exists even when two regions are far apart, but once the distance exceeds a certain range, non-local correlations can no longer be tested using the CHSH Bell inequality. Another study proved that a certain type of quantum operation, when performed sufficiently many times, will inevitably destroy entanglement. These five results do not completely resolve the original problems; some conclusions only apply under specific conditions, and there are still unresolved issues.

According to Zhitong Finance, Intel has agreed to acquire the Israeli quantum computing startup Classiq Technologies, with the transaction price undisclosed and expected to be completed in the first half of 2027. Classiq's clients include BMW and AT&T, and its technology helps clients write code that can be tested and run on any type of quantum hardware.This acquisition will enhance Intel's research and development capabilities in quantum hardware and make its products easier to deploy on quantum computers. Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger stated that partnering with Classiq will transform Intel's quantum computing division into a full-stack quantum computing enterprise. Classiq has raised over $200 million in funding and has approximately 130 employees, and after the acquisition, it will continue to help clients develop code that can run on various types of quantum hardware, including competitors' hardware. Intel has been committed for over a decade to transforming its silicon-based manufacturing advantages into a position in quantum computing, focusing on spin qubit technology.

The co-founder of the crypto startup accelerator AllianceDAO, Wang Qiao, stated that he is not worried about the crypto community's ability to cope with future AI and quantum threats, asserting that within the next two years, the world will realize that compared to the internet and traditional finance, cryptocurrencies are much better prepared for this.He mentioned that for the past decade, the crypto market has been a trillion-dollar scale and irreversible honey pot, which is an extremely attractive target for attacks, creating a system that has been tested in real combat far more than almost anywhere else on Earth, as well as a confrontational security culture.

According to Catcher Predict monitoring, in the market prediction event "Elon Musk Tweet Count Prediction" on Polymarket, the "Yes" option in the sub-market "260-279" has experienced severe fluctuations in winning probability, dropping from 52.5% an hour ago to the current 36.5% (a fluctuation of 16%). Please note the impact of related breaking news.

According to a post by Ki Young Ju, founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, on the X platform, the continuous recovery of Bitcoin's hash rate is an "indirect bullish signal" from institutional investors. He pointed out that a higher hash rate means stronger security and better value storage fundamentals, and most publicly listed mining companies are supported by traditional financial institutions (TradFi). Therefore, the rise in hash rate can be seen as institutional recognition of Bitcoin's security and long-term value. Hash rate is an indicator of the computational power of a blockchain network, representing the number of hash calculations that can be completed per second.CryptoQuant data shows that Bitcoin's hash rate has rebounded by about 45% from its summer low, rising from approximately 726 EH/s in July to about 1,050 EH/s on Wednesday. However, the global hash rate is still below the peak of 1,305 EH/s set in October 2025, when Bitcoin's price was above $111,000. On Thursday, when the U.S. stock market opened, Bitcoin's price was approximately $81,843.Publicly listed mining companies are still expanding their production capacity. Nasdaq-listed NIP Group (NIPG) announced a third batch of asset purchase agreements, which will acquire approximately 4.47 EH/s of deployed Bitcoin mining machines. After the transaction is completed, the total hash rate from the three batches is expected to reach 13.85 EH/s. The company currently ranks 16th among publicly listed mining companies with an operational hash rate of 3.11 EH/s, while Bitdeer leads with 79.9 EH/s. On Wednesday, NIPG's stock price fell 6.8% to $6.1, down 86% over the past year; affected by higher-than-expected inflation data, U.S. stocks experienced the most severe sell-off since July, with TeraWulf, Core Scientific, Cipher Mining, and IREN all seeing stock prices drop by about 12%.

According to PR Newswire, the blockchain asset management firm CMCC Global announced the tokenization of its Crest Fund (Crest) and Liberty Bitcoin Accumulation Fund (LBAF), calling them the first tokenized master fund products issued under El Salvador's digital asset legal framework.The two funds will be issued using Tether's Hadron tokenization platform and will raise funds from qualified investors through the regulated Bitfinex Securities platform, with the subscription period ending on October 30, 2026. Both funds are multi-manager quantitative hedge funds that invest in market-neutral strategies in the digital asset market, including funding rates, cross-exchange and volatility arbitrage, market making, and DeFi strategies. Among them, Crest is denominated in USD, targeting returns above U.S. Treasury yields; LBAF is denominated in Bitcoin, targeting a net annualized return of 8% to 12%.BTCS S.A., a digital asset treasury company listed in Poland and Frankfurt, has agreed to act as a cornerstone investor and plans to allocate a three-digit number of Bitcoins to LBAF, with the specific amount not yet disclosed. The token issuance price is set at $10 per CREST and 0.0001 BTC per LBAF, with a minimum subscription of one token; eligible holders can also trade on the secondary market through Bitfinex Securities around the clock.

According to The Block, holders of Starknet (STRK) supported a research proposal with over 93.5% of the voting power, which aims to explore the transformation of Starknet from an Ethereum Layer 2 network to an independent Layer 1 network with quantum resistance.StarkWare plans to release a draft white paper in November to further investigate the relevant technological pathways. It is important to note that this vote only supports the initiation of transformation research and does not mean that the transformation plan has been officially approved. Further governance approval will still be required to advance the related transformation.

According to Catcher Predict monitoring, in the "Elon Musk Tweet Count Prediction" event on the Polymarket market, the "Yes" option in the sub-market "320-339" has experienced significant fluctuations in winning probability, soaring from 45.05% an hour ago to the current 60.85% (a fluctuation of 15.8%). Please note the impact of relevant breaking news.

NVIDIA (NVDA.O) has completed a record simulation of fault-tolerant quantum computing at the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre.

Ethereum research forum researcher Pierre proposed a faster, aggregatable, and quantum-resistant privacy pool solution.This solution ports a Tornado Cash-like privacy pool to the hash-based SNARK system Flock, which may possess post-quantum security, and uses SHA-256. The solution replaces large circuits with small "single compression" circuits.

CryptoQuant's latest analysis indicates that while Bitcoin has support, the recovery process is uneven. First, regarding exchange reserves, it has risen from about 2.67 million BTC at the beginning of October to about 2.68 million BTC, still far below January levels. Low reserves do not mean that supply is continuously shrinking; transfers may reflect custody changes, and the increase itself does not prove selling pressure. Secondly, the recovery of spot demand has been hindered, with 30-day spot demand once approaching zero before turning negative again. Perpetual contract demand is positive, supporting overall demand.Finally, the behavior of whales is diverging. Addresses holding 100 to 1,000 BTC have still net accumulated over the past 60 days, but this is below the peak at the end of September; the group holding 1,000 to 10,000 BTC has seen a net decrease approaching zero; and the group holding over 10,000 BTC is negative. Accumulation is not fully underway. CryptoQuant believes that conditions still exist to support Bitcoin's bottoming out. For a solid recovery to occur, sustained spot demand support is needed, buyers must be able to absorb the BTC flowing back to exchanges, and accumulation behavior should spread to more holding groups. Market expectations regarding the U.S. midterm elections and monetary policy must translate into actual buying behavior. The key is whether price increases can attract a growing and lasting group of buyers.

The Zakura team, which operates the Zcash network, released a technical article stating that they plan to allocate a unique viewing key for each ZEC exchange completed through NEAR Intents, in order to block future quantum computers from exploiting public refund addresses to piece together user payment histories. NEAR Intents supports cross-chain token exchanges, and when users exchange the privacy coin ZEC for USDC, the service will publish a Zcash address for the user on the NEAR public blockchain, which will be used to return any unused ZEC.The Zcash address contains a public key generated by the wallet's viewing key, which cannot be reverse-engineered by ordinary computers, but large quantum computers running Shor's algorithm could theoretically deduce the key from the address. Zcash wallets can generate multiple seemingly unrelated addresses, but they typically share the same viewing key. Once an attacker cracks it, they can associate all payments received by the account and read the amounts and notes. Zakura's solution allocates a unique viewing key for each exchange, while the spending key remains in the user's main account. Even if the future refund address is compromised, the attacker would only be able to see payments related to that specific exchange.This design also addresses a practical issue: wallets conducting hundreds of exchanges would generate hundreds of keys, requiring each key to scan the entire Zcash chain during backup recovery. Zakura's solution is a privately queryable database that uses private information retrieval technology, so when the wallet inquires about the refund destination, the database will not know the address being queried. Zakura claims that wallets built on its open-source library (including Vizor) will be able to add this feature in the coming weeks, and hardware wallets will follow after firmware support, ahead of the January quantum-resistant payment target set by Zcash developers this month.