BeyondNISQ

I came for the Signal, but stayed for the Noise.

"If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." -Richard Feynman

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

Today's @qBitTensorLabs Live was packed — but Riverside had other plans. The stream died after ~40 seconds, and the recorded tracks are out of sync, so the video will take some extra time to get out. Bear with us.

In the meantime, here's what you missed:
🔹Terra Quantum @terraquantum_ag confirmed as our Breaking RSA challenge partner — full-spectrum quantum security expertise from a Swiss-headquartered team
🔹Treasury Wallet Challenge complete — two phases, no critical vulnerabilities. Production-ready.
🔹Prize pools at ~$375K and growing. On track for ~$1M by August.
🔹Valis are onboard and Enigma is primed to go live.
🔹Enigma launch dates announced:
Today — public repo with all validator + miner code + mock challenge live to begin end-to-end testing
May 22 — mock challenge tested on mainnet
May 28 — real challenge code drops (Breaking RSA + Peaked Circuits)
June 4 — live competition begins
🔹SN48 credit card payments launching — half price through Bittensor-- proceeds from revenue makes it back to the subnet alpha
🔹Rigetti Cepheus (108 qubits) replaces Ankaa-3 on Open Quantum - Live Now

Video coming as soon as we sort out the sync. Thanks for your patience.

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

@qBitTensorLabs @cryptoquick @SurmountSystems @theobcvc Fun chat today @cryptoquick -- the breadth and depth was off the chart. Looking forward to next time.

[Whit | $XMR | $TAO @taoreserve]

Excellent read/watch from @taodaily_io about @qBitTensorLabs @QuantumSN48 & @EnigmaSN63. Worth your time folks.
https://t.co/5KgJG3goMg

[Ventura Labs @VenturaLabs]

Ep. 91 - Bob Wold

Bob @BeyondNISQ is building Enigma @EnigmaSN63 and founder of @qBitTensorLabs

Timestamps
1:15 - Introduction
1:54 - Bob's Entry From Quantum World
2:58 - Qubit & Superposition Explained
3:09 - Bob's Journey Into Bittensor
4:23 - Backlash From Traditional Quantum Colleagues
5:38 - Quantum Rings vs. qBitTensorLabs
6:14 - SN48 & SN63: How the Two Subnets Relate
6:54 - SN48: Quantum Compute Marketplace
7:39 - The Pivot: From Quantum Innovate to Enigma
8:33 - Incentivizing Breaking Things
9:52 - Enigma's Bounty & Challenge Model
10:07 - Two Entry Points: Academics vs. Hackers
10:57 - Submission Fees & Anti-DoS Mechanics
13:38 - Q-Day: When Quantum Breaks Encryption
15:33 - DARPA Chart: RSA 2048 & Logical Qubits
17:41 - IonQ 2028 Roadmap & 1,600 Logical Qubits
19:33 - RSA, Prime Numbers & Shor's Algorithm
20:57 - Google's Paper: 1,400 Qubits Breaks Bitcoin
22:44 - IonQ Photonic Interconnect: One Risk De-risked
23:54 - Q-Day Won't Be Announced When It Happens
25:32 - Treasury Wallets: Trustless Prize Pools
31:42 - What Treasury Wallets Actually Are
33:45 - Live Challenge: Drain the $ 5K Wallet
34:54 - Breaking RSA & Peaked Circuit Challenges
37:32 - Pressure Testing as a Service
38:18 - Defining Exploits: Code Is Explicit
42:11 - Evaluation Loop
47:24 - Revenue Model & Feral GPL Licensing
49:45 - Commercial Licensing & Royalties
54:33 - Beyond NISQ: What the Name Means
56:16 - When Does the NISQ Era End?
57:56 - Offense vs. Defense: Will Encryption Keep Up?
1:02:15 - What Bob Is Most Excited About for Enigma
1:05:02 - Advice for Professionals Entering Bittensor

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

Careful though-- physical qubits ≠ progress.

Actual progress is 🔥

The QPU industry's actual failure isn't the trajectory it's the access model. Research can't get QPU time without piles of money. (That's what @QuantumSN48 fixes on @bittensor).

For the geeks-- a few important notes:

→ Dec 2023, IBM Condor hit 1,121 qubits. Missing from your chart. Same summit, IBM also announced Heron at 156 qubits with way better fidelity. Condor was a feasibility milestone, not a production target.

Translation: industry decided quality is the new game. The whole industry pivoted that quarter. Charting physical qubits after that is charting a metric the field deliberately abandoned. IBM

→ Dec 2024, Google Willow crossed below-threshold error correction. First time in the field's 30-year history. A 101-qubit distance-7 code with logical error suppressed by Λ = 2.14 per code-distance increase, exceeding the best physical qubit's lifetime by 2.4x.

Translation: Adding qubits now makes errors better, not worse. This is a key inflection.

→ Microsoft + Quantinuum: 12 logical qubits running with circuit error rate of 0.0011 vs. 0.024 for physical — 22x improvement.

Translation: Logical isn't theoretical anymore.

→ Oxford Ionics: 99.99% two-qubit gate fidelity in 2025. Quantinuum: 99.9%+.

Why is this important: Its squarely in the regime where error correction actually works.

→ RSA factoring requirement: dropped from 20 million qubits to ~1 million in 2025.

Goalpost moved 20x closer in a single paper.

→ Quantinuum Helios shipped commercially Nov 2025 — 98 fully-connected trapped-ion qubits, >99.9% fidelity, with a new real-time control engine.

This is production hardware, today.

Right metrics to watch are logical qubits and gate fidelity. Both are on a tear.

Charting physical qubit count past 2023 is like charting CPU GHz past 2005 (measuring the metric the industry deliberately stopped optimizing)

[Prof. Brian Keating @Briankeating]

The bottleneck holding quantum computing back isn't hardware.
It's that nobody's teaching physicists how to use it.
@QuantumRingsInc fixed that. Here's how 👇
https://t.co/5pP80MtmoZ

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

...For reference, according to @IonQ_Inc's roadmap 1,450 logical qubits will be in the rearview mirror in 2028.

https://t.co/m2QJuPdmWb

[Project Eleven @projecteleven]

Google also published new resource estimates for breaking crypto: 1,200 logical qubits or 1,450 logical qubits depending on the architecture.

This is a 10x improvement over the best previously published work.

All your models are destroyed.

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

"Not Posting the circuit" stops nothing. Simply saying it can be done is enough.

[Project Eleven @projecteleven]

Google considers the underlying quantum circuits too dangerous to publish…

This is the ❗️FIRST❗️ time this has happened in quantum resource estimation.

Google is treating blockchains like a security vulnerability that will be exploited.

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

@markjeffrey It's coming fast. Couldn't be a better time for the launch of the upcoming #SN63 #Enigma.

I'd be happy to spend some time talking about why this is a threat, and how Enigma helps people navigate this on Hashrate if you want to give it a go @markjeffrey

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

I can hardly wait...

[qBitTensor Labs @qBitTensorLabs]

#SN63

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

💀

[Will Zeng @wjzeng]

New paper with results claiming that 1k qubits (but more gates) can run decryption.

We shouldn’t underestimate how many quantum algorithm improvements remain to be found, even for very well studied applications.

Link below

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

Yes-- while this has drawn some scrutiny from the quantum community, it has sent shockwaves through the cyber security community.

Whether it is this new Jesse-Victor-Gharabaghi Algorithm, or another innovation, the fact that innovation comes at you fast and from anywhere, an has game changing impacts should scare anyone into running towards PQC, fast.

[qBitTensor Labs @qBitTensorLabs]

It's coming...

https://t.co/phfFH5T32O

The million dollar question: When will it be broken?

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

It was great to spend the weekend with the Hackers, the industry sponsors, and the facilitators. Always inspired by what small teams of passionate people can do in a short period of time.

[qBitTensor Labs @qBitTensorLabs]

Witness hundreds of students from across the world contributing to @OpenQuantum_ as they compete to solve the Quantum Rings Challenge in the 2026 @MIT #iQuHACK event.

Won't be long before quantum gigabrains like these are competing for massive payouts on #SN63...

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

Could this be true?

@IcebergQuantum just claimed that instead of ~1M physical qubits, RSA 2048 can now be broken with ~100k physical qubits using their LDPC codes.

"As a concrete demonstration, Pinnacle shows how breaking RSA-2048 — long considered to require millions of physical qubits — could be achieved with fewer than one hundred thousand"

https://t.co/4YeOJZTCsK

While we still have a long way to go to 100k qubits, we seems to be getting about a 10x reduction each year, while quantum computers rapidly grow.

Don't Panic, Do Prepare.

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

@btlabs_ai @EthereumDenver Thanks for setting this up. I've registered and will see you there.

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

Anyone from the Bittensor ecosystem making the trip out to Colorado for @EthereumDenver?

My team is bouncing around the idea of setting up a casual open coffee hour near the venue during the conference, and I wanted to see if anyone would be interested.

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

JB is probably right here.

Two questions where I’d love community input:

1 - Timing — With the broader crypto market on fire (and the ripple effects on Bittensor, etc), is now the right moment to do a tour? Or will it land on deaf ears given everything else going on?

2 - Selection — We want long-term investors who truly see the value in quantum—not speculators. (Speculators burned us in TAO flow: short-term hype, long-term pain.) With that in mind, which shows/podcasts/conferences should we prioritize?

Appreciate any thoughts!

[Ryan Bequette @dTAO_Dad]

@qBitTensorLabs Podcast tour updating the Bittensor community soon plz! @BeyondNISQ

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

@qBitTensorLabs If they don't give him back soon, we are doomed!

j/k. Thanks for representing the team Ryan.

[BeyondNISQ @BeyondNISQ]

@qubyte12 @qBitTensorLabs o man...