The Project Eleven “debacle” triggered the debate on the urgency of post-quantum migration at Bitco
For Guillemet, the central question in the face of the quantum threat is when and how to act.
Charles Guillemet, chief technology officer (CTO) of Ledger, warned on April 27 that, faced with the threat of quantum computing, Bitcoin faces a governance problem rather than a technical one.
In a publication on X, Guillemet pointed out that the community must reach consensus about a migration plan before uncertainty erodes confidence in the protocol.
The executive responded to a thread started by Conner Brown, an analyst linked to the Bitcoin ecosystem, following the so-called “debacle” of Project Eleven, after the company awarded a prize to an alleged experiment which would have broken an elliptic curve keywhich was questioned by different engineers and experts in the field.
Guillemet stated that the central question is not whether there is or will be a quantum computer capable of breaking Bitcoin, but when and how to act. According to the manager, Framing the debate solely on that question “is a recipe for disaster.”. For decentralized networks like Bitcoin, the risk is not technical but governance: the executive maintains that “it is not a technical problem, it is a decentralization problem.”
Among the unresolved decisions, Guillemet listed the following:
- What new signature scheme to adopt, whether to depreciate ECDSA and Schnorr,
- The impact on block size and network performance,
- If the update requires soft fork either hard forkand
- What happens to BTC that does not migrate, including funds in addresses with exposed public keys and those attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto.
Decentralized governance model: core of the problem
With these approaches, Guillemet opposes the statements of Brown, who proposed the creation of a public technical body, with a semiannual meeting, composed of academics of quantum computing, Bitcoin Core developers, and large lab quantum hardware builders.
The initiative would see the production of periodic reports on the state of the threat and available cryptographic alternatives, with explicit bias against marketing promises. Brown suggested that the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, could organize such a space.
Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, supported the proposal and clarified that his firm does not seek prominence in the post-quantum conversation. Pruden had previously indicated that around 7 million BTC are exposed to a hypothetical quantum attacker, a figure that contrasts with more conservative estimates from other players in the sector.
Guillemet warns that the deadlines are limited. According to Ledger’s CTO, the industry has approximately 9 years to update each relevant cryptographic systemand that margin “is not much time.” The manager’s position is that trust in the security of the systems is already at an inflection point and that rebuilding it once lost requires time that the ecosystem may not have.