Foresight News reports, citing CoinDesk, that Google says its Willow quantum chip has reduced the error rate in preparing the special states required for quantum computing (Magic States) by about 40 times using a method called “Cultivation.” The research was published in Science this week. It could lower the hardware costs of future large-scale quantum computers and draw greater attention to the potential threat of cracking Bitcoin wallets. Magic States are a key resource required to perform certain quantum computing operations, and preparing them consumes substantial hardware resources. In the experiment, Google achieved a state fidelity of about 99.99%, but only about 8% of attempts passed the screening process.

Researchers said further experiments will need to scale up and address issues such as real-time operation and error correction. In March this year, Google estimated that, under certain hardware assumptions, a future quantum computer might need fewer than 500,000 physical qubits to crack the wallet cryptography used by Bitcoin and Ethereum. For Bitcoin, the public keys of some early wallets have been visible since they were mined, making them potential targets for future quantum attacks in theory; wallets whose public keys have not been exposed may face different attack conditions.