Tripathi

building @tradehotstuff | Security Researcher | prev @iitroorkee

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

https://t.co/cgCkcdnVf7

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

• Google Quantum reveals 10x breakthrough in Shor's algorithm targeting secp256k1, kept secret via zk proof and coordinated with US govt.

• Oratomic dropped a paper same day, claimed just 10K physical qubits sufficient to run Shor's on secp256k1, neutral atom tech confirmed real, even Google pivoting to start a neutral atom lab

• French researcher André independently rediscovered the hidden technique within 2 months, launched public ecdsa[]fail, already 8.4% improvement over Google's circuit

• Ethereum migrating to post-quantum crypto targeting 2029, replacing BLS signatures, KZG commitments & ECDSA, leanVM built on hash-based SNARKs, $2M in open bounties (Proximity Prize + Poseidon Initiative) for researchers

[Justin Drake @drakefjustin]

Today a crazy quantum story just got wilder.

On March 31, the Google Quantum AI team published a landmark result on Shor's algorithm for elliptic curve cryptography. Technically, the paper was a bombshell: a dramatic 10x improvement over the state-of-the-art. As a stunt and wakeup call to the blockchain space, those optimisations were illustrated on secp256k1, the elliptic curve underlying Bitcoin and Ethereum signatures.

But perhaps the most striking part of the paper was sociological, not technical. Instead of following standard academic process, the optimisations were kept secret, hidden behind a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof. Google's accompanying blog post mentions they "engaged with the U.S. government". The ZK proof demonstrates the existence of algorithmic improvements without leaking details. Academic censorship with ZK, a historic first!

As a co-author of the Google paper I witnessed some of the context surrounding this censorship. To be honest, multiple aspects of that context don't sit well with me. As much as I believe the general public ought to know more, I am limited in my ability to whistleblow. Though let me be clear about one thing: the Google team's professionalism has been absolutely exemplary, and they deserve nothing but praise.

Censorship has a way of backfiring. The Streisand effect, where an attempt to bury something only draws more attention to it, is exactly what's unfolding today. First, Google's key optimisation has been rediscovered by the French. And in a thrilling turn of events, a collaborative Shor-at-home challenge just launched. The initiative, available at ecdsa[.]fail, breached a new Shor world record in a matter of hours.

Let's start with the rediscovery. Just two months after Google's paper, French quantum expert André Schrottenloher cracks the main secret optimisation. His paper, titled "Optimized Point Addition Circuits for Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithms", landed on the arXiv today. Big congrats to André, who beat several other nerdsnipped experts to it. In a blog post also published today, Craig Gidney, the world expert on Shor optimisations, revealed that he'd been sitting on this very optimisation for a whole year under censorship pressure.

Interestingly, André missed a handful of minor optimisations, both from Google's original publication and from improvements found since. It's plausible there's still plenty of juice left to squeeze out of Shor, and this is exactly what the ecdsa[.]fail challenge is about. The verifier program developed for the ZK proof does double duty, automatically filtering for valid submissions. Dozens of compounding small and micro improvements are rolling in. As of the time of writing there's an 8.4% improvement to Google's circuit, as measured by the product of logical qubit count and Toffoli gate count. Nice!

The nerdsnipping ran deeper than anyone expected. Over the last few weeks it became clear it extended well beyond André and other quantum experts. Behind the scenes, a small army of amateurs quietly got to work. Inspired by Karpathy-style autoresearch, they turned AI on Shor. Ironically, the verifier program for the ZK proof makes an ideal reward function for AIs. The barrier to entry for this modern style of research is refreshingly low, with several non-experts, even a teenager, finding nice optimisations. Get in touch if you'd like to join a Telegram group with fellow autoresearchers :)

Part 2: neutral atoms and qday

The story doesn't end with Google. On the same day Google went public, a stealthy startup called Oratomic published its own Shor paper in a coordinated release. It made a splash, ultimately becoming the most upvoted paper on scirate[.]com, a website ranking arXiv papers.

Oratomic's claim was wild. By building on Google's logical optimisations and applying custom physical optimisations for neutral atoms, they claimed just 10K physical qubits were sufficient to run Shor's algorithm on secp256k1. That number is mind-bogglingly low.

Knowing essentially nothing about neutral atoms when Oratomic's paper landed, I was intrigued and decided to learn more about the tech. I fell straight down the rabbit hole and spent a couple hundred hours on the topic. I got a little obsessed and watched every YouTube video I could find and spoke to a bunch of experts.

My conclusion? The tech is real, very real. Even Google recently decided to start a neutral atom lab, a notable pivot from their sole focus on superconducting qubits. If you care about qday, i.e. the day a quantum computer will break the first piece of cryptography in production, neutral atoms demand your attention. I shared some of my learnings on Shor and neutral atoms in a 30min talk at the ZKProof cryptography conference. You can find it on YouTube by searching "zkproof neutral atom".

Here's an interesting observation about this duo of breakthrough papers: neither Google nor Oratomic say a word about what their results mean for qday. No timelines. Zero. Nada. That is especially baffling given that the whole point of whitehat quantum cryptanalysis is to inform qday estimations and help the general public make good decisions.

So let me attempt to partially fill the silence, similarly to what Scott Aaronson did in his April 29 post. Given everything I know, including scary non-public information, I now put the odds of qday by 2032 at 50%. 10% by 2030.

Anecdotally, the US government has its own date: 2035. Originating at the NSA and later adopted by NIST, it's when branches of the US government will be disallowed from using quantum-vulnerable cryptography. In plain language: with hindsight, that date is a joke and should be discounted entirely. I don't see how NIST avoids being forced to pull it forward by years.

Part 3: post-quantum cryptography

There are good reasons to sound the alarm today, but please do not panic. Rushing carelessly towards immature post-quantum cryptography is a recipe for disaster. IMO a good target date for migration is 2029, roughly 3.5 years out. 2029 happens to be the date selected by Google, Cloudflare, and the Ethereum Foundation.

These days most of my time goes to safely migrating Ethereum towards post-quantum cryptography as part of the broader lean Ethereum effort. There's a lot to do. We need to rip out and replace BLS signatures at the consensus layer, KZG commitments at the data layer, and ECDSA signatures at the execution layer.

The plan to get there is compelling, and is based on hash-based cryptography. Within the Ethereum Foundation we've developed a Swiss army knife called leanVM (github[.]com/leanEthereum/leanVM) powered by the magic of hash-based SNARKs. Thanks to truly exceptional work by Emile, Thomas, and others, its performance is derisked. Regarding security, leanVM is a jewel, a minimal zkVM crafted for end-to-end formal verification and maximum security.

Want to help? There are two $1M initiatives. First, the Proximity Prize (proximityprize[.]org). Solve a long-standing mathematical conjecture in coding theory, improve hash-based SNARKs, and go home a millionaire. Second, the Poseidon Initiative (poseidon-initiative[.]info), offers $1M for breaking Poseidon, the SNARK-friendly hash function.

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

@hanzceo Key compromise

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

So the guy ran a small test first.

Swapped MON → eBTC on Uniswap, deposited into Curvance, borrowed a tiny bit of WBTC just to confirm the flow worked.

Then the compromised admin granted DEFAULT_ADMIN_ROLE to the attacker.

The attacker immediately:
• revoked the old admin
• granted himself MINTER_ROLE
• minted 1,000 eBTC

With the earlier tested flow, he deposited 45 eBTC into the Curvance ceBTC vault.

First borrow attempt actually reverted but the retry went through and pulled out ~11.29 WBTC , basically the entire WBTC pool, leaving just ~$60 of WBTC behind.

Within 4 minutes, that ~11.29 WBTC was already bridged out via LiFi.

Gone.

Seems like the thin liquidity on Monad saved a lot of funds here, as the guy still holds 955 eBTC and 45 ceBTC :)

[DCF GOD @dcfgod]

gm @EchoProtocol_ may be hacked on @monad

Someone minted 1k ebtc out of nowhere, max borrowed wbtc against it on @Curvance, bridged, and tornado away

[mks @mks_hot]

People frame RFQ vs CLOB like one replaces the other

In reality they optimize for different constraints

CLOBs maximize immediacy, visible depth and price discovery

RFQs maximize inventory efficiency and large size execution through external venues

The interesting part is when both compete inside the same execution engine

Native makers still set the touch and dominate latency-sensitive flow

RFQ liquidity compresses spreads on larger clips where external inventory access matters more

That is where hybrid market structure starts becoming structurally better instead of just theoretically better

We are starting it with spot equities, ETFs and deep spot liquidity, coming soon on RWA perp pairs next

[Kairon // Flow Architect @KaironFlow]

RFQ vs CLOB isn’t a design choice. It’s a tradeoff between latency, inventory risk and information leakage.
There’s been a lot of discussion on CT around which model wins.
Venues like @variational_io and @Ostium are leaning RFQ, while @HyperliquidX and @Lighter_xyz are doubling down on CLOBs.
We’ve been going deep on this ourselves to figure out the right direction.

To us it’s becoming clear hybrid fits both retail and institutions.
Users choose between latency and spread.
Makers can quote on book and respond to RFQs, improving capital efficiency and inventory control.
Spot equities RFQ is already live on @tradehotstuff Perps next.

Hybrid books win. Price on book, size via RFQ.

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

RFQ quotes get published onchain continuously with short expiries, similar to how @bebop_dex publishes quotes with 5sec and 75sec expiries on ethereum. Multiple entities could participate, and traders can choose between best-of-book and external quotes based on their preferred speed vs. spread tradeoff

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

https://t.co/cgCkcdnVf7

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

@mks_hot @LorisTools ghotstuff

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

@banteg seems nodes were signing tx data that didn’t include inbound/outbound bit i.e block proposer could take valid inbound tx and convert to outbound (or vice versa)
This fix includes inbound/outbound bit to signed payload :)

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

@banteg seems nodes were signing tx data that didn’t include inbound/outbound bit i.e block proposer could take valid inbound tx and convert to outbound (or vice versa)
This fix includes inbound/outbound bit to signed payload :)

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

Buy/sell spot @xStocksFi tokenized assets and broader crypto assets through our hybrid model, combining best of book + RFQ liquidity.

This is Phase 1 of the hybrid model, where all orders are routed through the RFQ path. You can now run basis trading strategies, systematic investment plans, and many more sophisticated strategies through @tradehotstuff

DM us if you have any questions or ideas to build around our builder program.

[Hotstuff @tradehotstuff]

Introducing Hotstuff Invest

24/7 spot markets for Tokenized Stocks, ETFs & Crypto, powered by @xstocksFi

Built on a Hybrid RFQ + order-book model with @bebop_dex as our 1st RFQ venue and more venues being integrated over time

The $147T equity market is coming on-chain.

[Bebop @bebop_dex]

Equities and ETFs tokenised by @xStocksFi enable access to world’s most important financial assets to anyone.

Bebop works to ensure these assets are seamlessly tradeable - 24/7, at great prices, and at size.

We’re proud to be @tradehotstuff’s first RFQ partner liquidity to their new spot markets.

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

Nice read ser 🙏
Two questions:
1/ As the signal gets crowded, how often do later slot participants disrupt or block the hedging venue long enough to force slot 1 to abandon edge and rotate to a less crowded signal?
2/ Does slot 1's ~4 bps impact directly cause the negative markout for later slots, or is it primarily signal decay? How do you decompose edge destruction between slot 1's footprint vs. natural expiry?

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

@banteg Actually, I frontrunned this one and broke down gasolina yesterday 😉

https://t.co/0Juzg9OVCg

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

From a first glance at gasolina‑aws, only 3 fields actually drive the DVN's RPC behavior.
- srcChainName
- srcTxHash
- blockConfirmation
None of them can produce a verifiable proof of packet execution on the source chain. srcTxHash, only helps fetch the receipt + logs and blockConfirmation is fully RPC‑dependent

If the configured RPC is malicious or compromised, it can return forged logs and the DVN signs them without any cryptographic check but It would be naive to use single RPC, or multiple RPCs from the same upstream provider but there could be other failures like signing‑key compromise, a compromised S3 bucket repointing providers.json, or a compromised gasolina host ::(

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

@setofsevens @moo9000 Now it could be a thing

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

DVN signed the payload which was never executed on the source chain

I'd be surprised if the DVN signing happened based on some centralised RPC provider data without verifying the source chain's block headers or transaction roots.

[banteg @banteg]

it's really crazy that layerzero doesn't have some redundant sanity check and allows to bridge 116,500 rseth from a chain with a supply of 49

anyway here is my investigation https://t.co/4J0f7fscck

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

@LayerZero_Core https://t.co/nTdis6jZAu

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

From a first glance at gasolina‑aws, only 3 fields actually drive the DVN's RPC behavior.
- srcChainName
- srcTxHash
- blockConfirmation
None of them can produce a verifiable proof of packet execution on the source chain. srcTxHash, only helps fetch the receipt + logs and blockConfirmation is fully RPC‑dependent

If the configured RPC is malicious or compromised, it can return forged logs and the DVN signs them without any cryptographic check but It would be naive to use single RPC, or multiple RPCs from the same upstream provider but there could be other failures like signing‑key compromise, a compromised S3 bucket repointing providers.json, or a compromised gasolina host ::(

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

@tayvano_ https://t.co/nTdis6jZAu

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

From a first glance at gasolina‑aws, only 3 fields actually drive the DVN's RPC behavior.
- srcChainName
- srcTxHash
- blockConfirmation
None of them can produce a verifiable proof of packet execution on the source chain. srcTxHash, only helps fetch the receipt + logs and blockConfirmation is fully RPC‑dependent

If the configured RPC is malicious or compromised, it can return forged logs and the DVN signs them without any cryptographic check but It would be naive to use single RPC, or multiple RPCs from the same upstream provider but there could be other failures like signing‑key compromise, a compromised S3 bucket repointing providers.json, or a compromised gasolina host ::(

[Tripathi @0xTripathi]

• Users have stuck aWETH on Aave
• Fluid had borrowed aWETH from Aave
• If a user gives their aWETH to Fluid, Fluid returns it to Aave and gives the user an exit in wstETH at some haircut

Users get an exit and Fluid saves the spiked borrowed APR.

GG

[Fluid 🌊 @0xfluid]

Introducing aWETH Redemption Protocol

With ETH utilization at 100% on Aave, many lenders are currently unable to withdraw and face increasing risk if markets move.

aWETH Redemption Protocol allows ETH lenders to:

• Exit into wstETH or weETH
• Regain immediate liquidity
• Reduce exposure to liquidation risk

If you’re just lending ETH — you can fully exit.
If you have ETH collateral and another debt — your collateral is seamlessly swapped into wstETH or weETH while your debt remains the same.

We’re working alongside @LidoFinance , @ether_fi, @0xProject, @1inch,
@KyberNetwork, and other ecosystem partners to:
• Reduce systemic risk in DeFi
• Ease utilization pressure
• Support a healthier DeFi market

Our goal is simple: protect users while reinforcing the foundations of DeFi.

Capacity is initially limited to $1B in ETH.

https://t.co/VBIAT9FZyg