quant

Quantitative researcher ahzam stated that he will join Proof as the head of quantitative research, working alongside Squid and the team to build a new type of market. ahzam mentioned that he has been working at VelocityDEX and Drift since early 2025, and in recent months the team has undergone a complete reconstruction of the exchange, where he was responsible for most of the exchange's economic models and program development. ahzam also indicated that he has been working on perpetual contracts almost every day for the past two years.ahzam noted that he has been paying attention to Proof since Squid began experimenting with conditional contracts, viewing it as a new asset class that combines perpetual contracts and prediction markets, with related work focusing on fair pricing and exchange design. ahzam stated that he will travel to London to attend Breakpoint. Proof is driven by Squid and is positioned as a conditional perpetual and multi-world market exchange; VelocityDEX is a perpetual contract exchange on Solana, renamed from Drift. ahzam's personal profile shows that he was previously a quantitative researcher at VelocityDEX and has worked at AsgardFi.

AMD will make an equity investment in the American quantum computing company PsiQuantum.

IBM announced the next-generation superconducting quantum processor IBM Quantum Nighthawk r3, designed to accurately perform 10,000 quantum operations on 520 programmable qubits. This processor contains 2,034 physical qubits, continuing the square lattice connectivity and fast operation architecture of Nighthawk r2, and adds 10 inter-chip connections called l-couplers. IBM plans to connect two Nighthawk r3 processors into a single 1,040 qubit system by 2027.The currently deployed Nighthawk r2 is equipped with 120 programmable qubits, 218 couplers, and 120 reset elements, capable of executing over 100,000 circuits per second, with a throughput approximately 25 times that of Heron, and a maximum speed increase of 19 times for partner workloads, with E.ON reporting a 15 times increase. IBM previously connected two Nighthawk r1 processors using 4 l-couplers, achieving a quantum state transfer fidelity of up to 99.3%, averaging 99%; the two connected cryogenic modules cooled down to below 15 milli-Kelvin within 5 days.

Ethlabs published an article on the Ethereum developer community forum, proposing to set 2027 as the target year for Ethereum to achieve post-quantum and post-AI capabilities, referring to this plan as "pqai27." The proposal argues that with the rapid enhancement of AI capabilities, the accelerated development of quantum computing, and the increased ability of AI models to discover software vulnerabilities on a large scale, Ethereum should prioritize strengthening the security of its underlying protocol to prepare for potential future cryptographic risks and cyberattacks.Ethlabs pointed out that the U.S. government has advanced its target date for addressing quantum risks from 2035 to 2030, while Google plans to achieve post-quantum capabilities by 2029. At the same time, AI is solving a large number of long-standing mathematical problems and can also discover software vulnerabilities on a large scale. Ethlabs believes that although there is currently no evidence that existing cryptographic primitives will definitely be broken by AI, the associated risks are difficult to predict accurately, making it necessary to advance security upgrades proactively.In terms of the technical roadmap, Ethlabs divides the goals into two phases: the first is "pqai-ready," which means the Ethereum consensus layer will achieve a post-quantum upgrade, allowing all users to have a path to migrate to post-quantum accounts; if existing cryptography fails prematurely, the network can still operate with reduced processing capacity. The second is "pqai-scaled," which means supporting post-quantum transactions and data availability under full network capacity, aiming for post-quantum transactions to reach the processing scale of ordinary transactions, including post-quantum signature aggregation and post-quantum data availability solutions.To achieve this goal, Ethlabs suggests reassessing the scope of the upcoming hard fork Hegotá, reconsidering upgrades that do not belong to the critical path of pqai27. Among them, Frames and related post-quantum account proposals are still regarded as key components; FOCIL needs to be reassessed for its impact on upgrade progress and post-quantum compatibility. Additionally, Ethereum needs to choose between the post-quantum transformation of the existing Gasper consensus protocol and transitioning to a decoupled consensus. Ethlabs stated that to concentrate resources on advancing pqai27, it will withdraw the Quick Slots feature previously sought for Hegotá and plans to continue promoting this feature in 2028. The Glamsterdam upgrade and its scaling plan will proceed as originally scheduled. This roadmap remains a suggestion proposed by Ethlabs and will require further discussion and determination by Ethereum core developers.

The Bitcoin Layer 2 network Stacks has completed a post-quantum signature test, verified through a transfer of sBTC. The test utilized Lamport's one-time signature in a mainnet treasury withdrawal.Stacks stated that this test did not upgrade the regular sBTC wallet, nor did it change the Bitcoin reserves backing the token. sBTC is an asset anchored to Bitcoin within the Stacks ecosystem, used to bring Bitcoin's liquidity and security into its network.

CryptoQuant analyst Arab Chain stated that Binance's estimated leverage ratio for XRP has dropped to about 0.14, the lowest level in three months.

According to the latest data from Glassnode, approximately 35.4% of the Bitcoin supply (7.12 million BTC) public keys are visible on-chain, which is part of what future quantum computers may attack.Among them, address reuse accounts for 25.8%, and exchanges account for 11.6%. The exposure ratio has continued to rise from 24.8% at the beginning of 2021, and the risk exposure under the threat of quantum computing is expanding. Glassnode points out that transferring these tokens to new addresses can eliminate this exposure risk.

The on-chain data analysis platform CryptoQuant stated that the contraction rate of USDT supply has exceeded the level after the FTX collapse. In the past 60 days, the market value of USDT has shrunk by 6.6 billion dollars, more than double the decline during the same period in December 2022.CryptoQuant also pointed out that in this round of the cryptocurrency market cycle, the growth of stablecoin scale has been an important source of funds driving the market upward, and now this liquidity support is gradually weakening.

The XRP Ledger Foundation's 2027 roadmap outlines the anti-quantum signature amendment, planning to first study migration solutions, and then advance development and auditing.

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost pointed out that the market capitalization of altcoins has shrunk by about 200 billion dollars, with about 70% of altcoins on Binance falling below the 200-day moving average. From mid-August to the end of September, the market capitalization of altcoins, excluding Bitcoin and stablecoins, had increased by 320 billion dollars, but the subsequent pullback erased most of the gains.Darkfost stated that in mid-August, 82% of altcoins on Binance were below the 200-day moving average, and by early October, this proportion had dropped to 10%, with nearly 90% above that average. Following this, the macro and political environment deteriorated, with central banks in the US, Europe, and the UK raising interest rates, and the results of the midterm elections increasing uncertainty. The stock market, especially technology stocks, saw a significant decline, with the Nasdaq falling 14% from recent highs.As a result, the market capitalization of altcoins has shrunk by about 200 billion dollars, erasing nearly two-thirds of the gains from August to September. Currently, about 70% of altcoins on Binance have fallen below the 200-day moving average, and this proportion is approaching 80% again. Darkfost indicated that historically, such extreme situations sometimes signal a trend reversal.

According to a report by Bloomingbit, Bitcoin infrastructure company Blockstream stated in its third-quarter business update that Bitcoin can prepare for future quantum computer attacks by adopting new digital signature technology. The Blockstream team previously released a report comparing three lattice-based signature schemes: Dilithium, Falcon, and Hawk.Researchers assessed that Falcon-1024 provides the best balance between data size, verification speed, and the maturity of its security foundation, stating, "If we had to choose a lattice-based signature scheme for Bitcoin today, we would choose Falcon-1024." However, researchers also pointed out that the finalization of the Falcon standard, obtaining verified implementations, and the memory burden on hardware wallets remain key challenges. The team indicated that hash-based signatures are a more conservative choice in the short term, and once the Falcon standard is standardized and implementation technology matures, consideration can be given to combining both methods to enhance security and processing efficiency.

The decentralized machine learning network Bittensor announced on Twitter the launch of a quantum-resistant wallet, supporting three post-quantum signature schemes: ML-DSA-65, Falcon-512, and Falcon-1024, with ML-DSA-65 having been standardized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The quantum-resistant wallet supports both cold keys and hot keys, covering operations such as TAO transfers, staking, and validator weight settings.This update also provides an optional automatic key rotation feature: once a user-signed transaction is recorded on-chain, the wallet will automatically switch to a new signing key, and the old key will no longer authorize transactions for that account. The account address, balance, and staking remain unchanged, and there is no need to change the mnemonic phrase each time. The quantum-resistant wallet without key rotation does not require registration, while enabling key rotation requires registration and a one-time permanent lock of 0.2 TAO. Existing wallets can continue to be used, and users can migrate existing funds and stakes to the new account through transfers or cold key exchanges.

According to Fields' concept, an attacker stealing 1 BTC needs to provide an additional 1 BTC from a quantum-safe wallet as collateral, and both funds will be locked for a waiting period, such as 30 days.Before quantum attacks become a reality, the original owner can create a quantum-safe "mine" that contains hidden proof of ownership. If the thief later attempts to transfer the vulnerable coins, the stolen BTC and the thief's collateral will be locked. The owner can disclose the proof during the waiting period to reclaim their BTC and receive the thief's collateral as a penalty. The thief cannot determine which addresses have traps before investing funds.

CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost pointed out that, calculated over a 90-day rolling window, the cumulative Z-score of the correlation between Bitcoin returns and S&P 500 returns has risen above zero for the first time since 2015, reaching 98.5. A score above 0 indicates that the correlation of Bitcoin is higher than usual, while a score below 0 indicates lower correlation. The cumulative Z-score summarizes deviations to present trends. Darkfost noted that this trend has been clearly upward since the low point, and this breakthrough is symbolic, as Bitcoin is increasingly moving in tandem with the stock market.Darkfost also pointed out that the recent momentum of this correlation is slowing down. The rate of change in the short-term 90-day correlation has fallen from recent highs to 6.3%. The correlation between the two remains above average, but it is no longer strengthening as rapidly as before. He believes this is mainly due to market maturation, as more financial professionals are increasingly using Bitcoin as a conventional financial tool with the improvement of ETFs and trading channels.

On-chain data analysis platform CryptoQuant certified analyst CryptoZeno stated that the current market structure of Bitcoin shows that the cycle heat is cooling down, but there are no extreme signals commonly seen near significant historical turning points. The 30-day moving average of the Bitcoin Cycle Extremum Index has dropped to 15.8%, which is in the observation or mild pressure range.Currently, the BTC price has retraced about 46% from its previous historical high, but the index remains far below the levels that represent active or extreme phases. The Cycle Extremum Oscillation Indicator is also showing cautious signals, with its 30-day moving average close to the historical range bottom and significantly below the 1.0 threshold. In previous active market phases in early 2021 and during multiple periods from 2024 to 2025, this indicator had significantly increased, but no similar changes have been observed so far. CryptoZeno indicated that BTC is currently closer to an adjustment and low activity phase rather than a confirmed cycle bottom, and the low indicator readings do not mean that selling pressure has been exhausted. There may still be continued consolidation or even a new round of declines, and attention should be paid to whether the Cycle Extremum Index can continue to rise back to the active phase, as well as whether the oscillation indicator can recover simultaneously.

According to CryptoBriefing, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake announced on November 3 that leanVM has achieved end-to-end formal verification. leanVM is a minimalist zkVM designed for efficiently aggregating hash-based post-quantum signatures, packaging multi-signatures into compact proofs. In terms of performance, leanVM can handle over 1000 leanXMSS aggregations per second; leanXMSS is a hash-based signature scheme planned to replace BLS at the consensus layer.At Devcon 8, Drake adjusted the target date for Ethereum's full transition to post-quantum security to December 2028, in order to allow space for the network forks needed for the transition. This plan relies on three open-source projects: leanVM, leanXMSS, and leanSpec. The Ethereum Foundation is developing open-source implementations and advancing formal verification, while also encouraging innovation through incentives like the Poseidon Prize. The report noted that the formal verification of leanVM proves that the code meets specifications, but December 2028 remains a target rather than a commitment.