IONQ COMPILES SHOR'S ATTACK ON SECP256K1 DOWN TO 19,397 IONS AND 26 DAYS PER ATTEMPT

Summary from the TLDR InfoSec newsletter

IonQ published a blueprint estimating that 19,397 physical qubits and 1,457 logical qubits are required to break 256-bit elliptic-curve signatures and compromise dependent systems. The proposed attack uses the Walking Cat architecture to solve the secp256k1 discrete logarithm problem with about 39 million Toffoli gates over an estimated 25.7 days per attempt. IonQ describes this as the first fully compiled, fault-tolerant resource estimate for this attack and notes that the required machine does not currently exist and that the estimated scale aligns with its 2028 technology roadmap.