Danny Lung

Fintech | Post-Quantum | Stablecoins | Digital Assets "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"

[PQA Labs @pqalabs]

Quantum-proof security has a massive size problem.

#Postquantum signatures are so large that implementing them breaks global website load times.

Yesterday, Let's Encrypt @letsencrypt announced the engineering breakthrough that fixes it: 🧵

[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.

[Danny Lung @DL039]

😶😶😶

[Sani | TimechainIndex.com @SaniExp]

🚨🚨🚨 Someone just broadcasted 5 transactions totaling 107 BTC to the Bitcoin "burn address" 1111111111111111111114oLvT2
😢😢

https://t.co/O8qeGjrzG9

[PQA Labs @pqalabs]

Big thanks to @sumsub & @dkmecosystem for the invitation! 🤝
Our Co-founder & CEO @DL039 joined experts to talk about. "How do Chinese enterprises successfully scale overseas while ensuring sustained profitability?"

It comes down to next-gen payment infrastructure and bulletproof security. 🌍🔒

[Danny Lung @DL039]

幣圈 做市商 101

Dummies for #crypto #MarketMaking

[danny @agintender]

https://t.co/QcmRbmMbWB

[Danny Lung @DL039]

@yuyy614893671 What a crowd 💰💻🏦

[金融汪 @yuyy614893671]

看看Bloomberg抓拍的晚宴上大佬们

[Danny Lung @DL039]

5. Consumer Protections: Strengthens the regulation of crypto ATMs/Kiosks, introduces bankruptcy-remote protections, and establishes a federally protected status for self-hosted wallets.

[Danny Lung @DL039]

What is CLARITY ACT? Key areas below and TL;DR in comments:

1. SEC vs. CFTC Jurisdictional Dispute
2. Security vs. Commodity Classification Framework
3. The Legal Status of DeFi
4. Developer Protections
5. Consumer Protections

#US #SEC #CFTC #Regulations #DigitalAssets #Crypto

[U.S. Senate Banking Committee GOP @BankingGOP]

🚨 WATCH: Chairman @SenatorTimScott leads the Senate Banking Committee in a historic markup of the CLARITY Act, legislation to establish clear rules of the road for digital assets. https://t.co/wlHj2jcAEF

[Danny Lung @DL039]

4. Developer Protections: Establishes that software developers and non-controlling service providers do not constitute "Money Transmitters," thereby exempting them from AML compliance burdens.

[Danny Lung @DL039]

3. The Legal Status of DeFi: Officially defines DeFi Trading Protocols as unregulated automated systems, while establishing clear compliance obligations for "non-DeFi trading protocols" that exhibit characteristics of centralized control.

[Danny Lung @DL039]

2. Security vs. Commodity Classification: Establishes a dual classification system comprising "Ancillary Assets" and "Network Tokens," using the token issuer's degree of control as the determining criterion.

[Danny Lung @DL039]

1. SEC vs. CFTC Jurisdictional Dispute: Clarifies when a digital asset is a "security" (regulated by the SEC) and when it is a "commodity" (regulated by the CFTC), putting an end to the jurisdictional conflicts between the two agencies over the same assets.

[Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong]

The crypto market structure bill has PASSED the Senate Banking Committee with a bi-partisan vote!

Historic day for crypto and for the future of digital assets in America. Grateful for the countless hours from lawmakers and staff to strengthen this legislation. Big improvement from where we were in January on rewards, tokenization, DeFi, and CFTC authority. I'm proud we stood up for our customers in that moment, and the bill is better because of it.

Looking forward to a bipartisan law that cements the US as the world's crypto capital. Let's get CLARITY done.

[Danny Lung @DL039]

See you all @WikiEXPO #HongKong July 23-24!

[Danny Lung @DL039]

Powerful speech
https://t.co/xVywrPjg3i

[Carnegie Mellon University @CarnegieMellon]

As the 2026 Commencement keynote speaker, Jensen’s words solidified the importance of embracing discovery and innovation.

“This is your moment to help shape what comes next. So run. Don’t walk.”

Read more from 2026 Commencement:
https://t.co/btihiIqI6p

[The Quantum Insider @QuantumDaily]

Asia is quietly becoming one of the most consequential battleground in quantum technology.

The Quantum Insider has just published a deep intelligence series analyzing the national strategies of four of the region's most ambitious players:

🔹 China — $10–15B committed, building a quantum-secure state infrastructure through long-term mobilization and industrial sovereignty

🔹 India — Targeting top-3 global quantum economy status by 2035, with a bold play for 50%+ of the global quantum software market

🔹 South Korea — Pivoting from research to manufacturing dominance; aiming for 10% global quantum chip market share with $2.3B+ in combined investment

🔹 Singapore — Positioning as the indispensable Asia-Pacific hub, connecting Western hardware partners to 680M+ ASEAN markets

Each country is taking a radically different approach, different timelines, different strengths, different risk profiles.

The full reports are now live on The Quantum Insider intelligence platform.

[Etherealize @Etherealize_io]

Vitalik Buterin on Ethereum as the economic layer for AI

“The blockchain to me is the most natural way to allow applications and cooperation between many different people in the long term without needing to agree on who to trust. The other thing is also the economic layer. This is the layer where blockchains can support AIs.”

Vitalik believes Ethereum will play a large role in the future of decentralized AI:

“If you have more decentralized AI, that means you have different AIs (agents, programs) that are controlled by different people and need to interact with each other. And for that interaction to be possible, you need to have an economic layer. Either cooperation is based on economic incentives and economic rules. Or it’s based on central control. It’s usually one of the two, and if we can set up the economic system, that makes more decentralized interaction between AIs possible.”

Source: @okx (Apr 2026)

Read our full article on why AI agents will need Ethereum for low-risk DeFi below👇

[Danny Lung @DL039]

@QDayOfficial 🔥

[吴说区块链 @wublockchain12]

Vitalik：Agent 时代的下一步支付标准可能是 ZK Payments

以太坊创始人 Vitalik Buterin @VitalikButerin 在 接受 OKX 采访时表示，原生 Agent 标准中协议层面上支付的下一步可能是 ZK Payments 。他认为在 AI 场景下，持久的化名身份最终会丧失所有隐私 。团队正开发 ZK API 将每个请求隔离，无需为每笔请求发链上交易即可保护隐私，并结合保证金防范滥用 。

来源： OKX

[Danny Lung @DL039]

@saylor Thank you and welcome back 🫡