Quantus Takes Aim at Bitcoin’s Quantum Problem
QTC is now tradable through NEAR Intents, giving the quantum-resistant L1 its first real liquidity test against Bitcoin and Zcash.
As of today, Quantus, a new quantum-resistant, private L1 pitching itself as an alternative to Bitcoin, is tradable through NEAR Intents, giving QTC its first real connection to cross-chain liquidity.
The proof-of-work chain itself has actually been live since September 9th, but until now has remained largely isolated by the lack of a real liquidity network, making QTC difficult to buy and, as a result, difficult to build a base of holders around. Going live on NEAR Intents changes that, opening Quantus up to a much larger pool of crypto liquidity.
To discuss the launch, co-founder Christopher Smith joined our podcast to share more about the L1, what he sees as the real hurdles of quantum, and why it's working so closely with NEAR.
What follows is a summary of the conversation, and what it says about how Bitcoin, Zcash and Quantus each trade off credibility, privacy, and quantum risk.
Let's begin.
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What Is Quantus?
Quantus is an L1 built to weather quantum attacks and remain private while doing so.
It replaces Bitcoin's vulnerable elliptic curve signatures with a quantum-resistant, lattice-based scheme, while borrowing a proposed Ethereum design to keep transactions private through zero knowledge. Like Bitcoin, it has a 21 million supply cap, though 27% of it was pre-mined for investors, founders, and the team, with the rest being steadily dripped as block rewards rather than halvings.
What's drawn interest (or raised eyebrows based on who you are) is that it's backed by many of the same names that got loud on Zcash last year. Balaji led the second round, plus AngelList co-founder Babak Nivi and Solana's resident ZODLer Mert are among the investors.
All of it is in service of the quantum problem, whose scale and layered social complexity Smith outlines better than anyone I've heard recently.
The Quantum Problem
Smith’s core point is simple: the technical problem can be solved, but the social coordination problem remains massive.
BIP-360, a proposal to add a new quantum-resistant address type to Bitcoin, offers one technical path, but it only protects coins that migrate. That leaves Satoshi's coins, along with coins lost, forgotten, or held by the deceased effectively unreachable, unable to migrate even if BIP-360 or something like it passes and thus indefinitely vulnerable Sure, Bitcoin's 17 years of distribution strengthens its decentralization, but also makes reaching every exposed holder close to impossible. For Bitcoin, that is a credibility problem as much as a technical one, since its core promise is that you own your coins.
And it isn't just Bitcoin facing the threat of quantum. The whole industry has been layering one cryptographic scheme on top of another for a decade, Smith argues, leaving a patchworked system that's incredibly difficult to upgrade in its entirety.
For example, on Ethereum, migrating a normal wallet could mean unwinding a lending position, repaying debt, moving the assets and rebuilding the position in a new wallet. Staking and crosschain systems have their own cryptography to upgrade on top of that.
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This is where Quantus believes it can compete, by offering one clean, simple fix, a chain that starts without the layers.
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The Catch
Yet as we know, there's usually no "one clean, simple fix," and Quantus's pitch sounds a lot like the "I can fix Bitcoin with my new L1" promises we've heard before. The difference is that the problem it points to is real. But a real problem doesn't guarantee anyone shows up to hold the solution.
Smith acknowledges this: Quantus removes Bitcoin's cryptographic migration risk, but swaps it for an adoption problem, which is really a credibility problem. Out of the gate there’s no liquidity, no brand, no holders, no network effects.
Their work with NEAR is, in part, an attempt to jumpstart that credibility. Think of NEAR Intents as the venue where QTC is now effectively "listed," connecting it to crosschain liquidity and a far larger pool of potential traders than Quantus could build on its own, which is especially difficult for a proof-of-work coin whose early supply has yet to be mined.
Being easier to trade doesn't manufacture credibility, but it feeds some of its ingredients: liquidity, distribution, and network effects. It also casts NEAR as a sort of port for specialized new chains looking for a way into the rest of crypto.
Three Assets, Three Risk Profiles
Put the three chains I’ve mentioned in this article so far side by side and the tradeoff is clearer:
Bitcoin has the most credibility, but little privacy and real quantum migration risk. That credibility is trending down.
Zcash has privacy, a quantum roadmap through Tachyon, and credibility that is trending up.
Quantus has privacy and quantum resistance today, but no credibility yet.
None of the three is strictly better. They're different mixes of the same qualities, each hedging the others' weaknesses, and each asking you to take on a different risk.
This is also why I don't think Zcash's backers funding Quantus necessarily undermines Zcash. Yes, both are pitching themselves as alternative stores of value to Bitcoin. But Zcash has something Quantus cannot simply code into existence: a decade of development, organizations devoted to improving it, and a decade's worth of token distribution. Quantus has been live for less than a month.
That brings us back to the bigger picture: I expect this spectrum of "Bitcoin, but better" alternatives to become a larger theme this cycle. We've seen Bitcoin challengers promise faster blocks or cheaper transactions before, but those never threatened Bitcoin's core promise. Quantum does. It goes after ownership, the thing Bitcoin is ultimately supposed to guarantee, and with it the credibility Bitcoin has built. Pair that with a widening sense that Bitcoin has been absorbed by the financial system it was built to route around, as I argued recently, and challengers have more room than they've had in a while.
That doesn't mean Quantus wins. It could easily be a nonevent. Whether it captures any of that room is another question entirely.
David Christopher
David is a writer/analyst at Bankless. Prior to joining Bankless, he worked for a series of early-stage crypto startups and on grants from the Ethereum, Solana, and Urbit Foundations. He graduated from Skidmore College in New York. He currently lives in the Midwest and enjoys NFTs, but no longer participates in them.
