algorithm

Anthropic announced that the Claude Mythos Preview model has made breakthroughs in cryptographic research, discovering improved attack methods against the post-quantum digital signature candidate HAWK. HAWK is a post-quantum signature candidate solicited by NIST to combat quantum computer attacks, which has already passed two rounds of expert review. However, Claude reduced the effective key strength of HAWK-256 from 2^64 to 2^38 in just 60 hours, significantly lowering the theoretical cost of cracking. HAWK has not yet been deployed in practice, and this attack currently does not affect any production systems.Claude also discovered an improved attack against 7-round AES, achieving a speed increase of 200 to 800 times. During the research process, Claude independently completed literature reviews, mathematical reasoning, and experimental validation with limited guidance from cryptographers. The HAWK attack took about 60 hours and had an API cost of approximately $100,000; the AES attack was completed independently by Claude, which generated about 1 billion tokens before proposing core innovative ideas. Anthropic researchers then spent hundreds of hours validating the results. Anthropic stated that AI models can now help identify significant flaws in cryptographic algorithms, and the cryptography community may face bottlenecks similar to those in the software vulnerability field—AI-generated research results far exceed human verification capabilities. Anthropic has collaborated with academic institutions to launch the CryptanalysisBench benchmark and coordinated disclosures with NIST authors and government partners. The research team has achieved preliminary results on algorithms such as LEA and Serpent-128. Anthropic warns that as AI capabilities improve, actual attacks against deployed systems may be discovered in the future, necessitating the establishment of response mechanisms in advance.

According to CoinDesk, the algorithmic stablecoin Balance Coin was attacked on Wednesday due to a protocol pricing vulnerability, with its price plummeting from nearly 1 dollar to about 0.0014 dollars, a drop of over 99%, resulting in an almost total evaporation of a nominal market value of 3.5 million dollars. Security company SlowMist revealed that the attacker manipulated the protocol's oracle, writing an abnormally low Bitcoin price into the system, while the lending contract did not perform reasonable range checks and lacked a liquidation delay mechanism, allowing the attacker to instantly liquidate a Bitcoin collateral vault that should not have been liquidated with a single transaction and profit from the exchange, netting approximately 912,000 dollars, with funds coming from the governance entity 42DAO.At the time of this attack, DeFi security is facing stricter scrutiny due to the enhanced capabilities of AI systems. Last night, an OpenAI test model broke out of its controlled testing environment and breached the Hugging Face servers during an evaluation, highlighting the real threat posed by the upgrade of automated attack methods to on-chain protocols.

On-chain detective ZachXBT stated that during the migration from the traditional private messaging system to XChat, the X platform encountered multiple technical bugs. At the same time, the reliability of the platform's search function declined, affecting information retrieval efficiency. More importantly, the X platform's algorithm has a "traffic bottleneck" for cryptocurrency content, making it easier for content to be restricted within the cryptocurrency vertical, thereby reducing the ability to reach a broader audience.

According to monitoring by Blockaid, the algorithmic stablecoin MIM has experienced a de-pegging situation on Arbitrum. The current trading price of MIM in the executable path is approximately $0.91 to $0.92, which is due to insufficient or imbalanced liquidity in the Arbitrum liquidity pool.According to on-chain data, the current quotes for MIM across multiple chains are approximately $0.871---$0.874, with a 24-hour decline of about 11%.

According to Jinshi News, the technology company Hangzhou Yunshen Technology Co., Ltd., which focuses on embodied intelligent robots and their supporting products and solutions, has released a prospectus. It shows that the revenue from the embodied intelligent robot project for the year 2025 is expected to reach 322.3773 million yuan; the revenue from product components is expected to reach 11.9501 million yuan; and the revenue from supporting services is expected to reach 2.573 million yuan.According to the resolutions from the company's first extraordinary general meeting of shareholders in 2026 and the ninth meeting of the first board of directors, this issuance aims to raise 2,502.511 million yuan. After deducting issuance costs, the funds will be invested in the research and development projects for embodied algorithms and models, the research and development projects for robot bodies and solutions, the industrialization projects for embodied intelligent robots, and the construction projects for embodied intelligent robot bases.

Sonic elaborates on its technological path towards the "post-quantum era," pointing out that most current PoS public chains rely on elliptic curve signatures (such as ECDSA, Ed25519), which are at risk of being cracked once quantum computing (like Shor's algorithm) matures.Sonic states that the industry is exploring post-quantum cryptographic solutions (such as hash-based XMSS, SPHINCS+, and lattice-based Dilithium, Falcon), but mainstream consensus mechanisms generally rely on BLS aggregate signatures and threshold signatures, making the transition to post-quantum systems face challenges in performance, bandwidth, and architectural reconstruction. In contrast, Sonic's SonicCS consensus protocol does not rely on aggregate signatures or global randomness, but instead uses single-node signatures and hash functions to construct a DAG structure. Therefore, when switching to post-quantum cryptography, only the signature algorithm needs to be replaced to complete the upgrade, without the need to adjust the consensus logic or network structure. Sonic emphasizes that this design will significantly reduce the complexity of future migrations to post-quantum security, enabling the network to have stronger adaptability when quantum computing threats arise.

Zhao Changpeng posted on platform X that cryptocurrencies only need to upgrade to post-quantum algorithms to cope with the impact of quantum computing, and there is no need to panic.In terms of practical execution, there are difficulties in upgrading organizations in a decentralized environment, and the choice of algorithms may spark debates and lead to forks. Some projects that have stopped development may not undergo upgrades, which helps to clean up such projects. In the short term, new code may introduce vulnerabilities or security issues, and users who self-custody cryptocurrencies need to migrate their assets to new wallets.Regarding the Bitcoin held by Satoshi, if the assets move, it means he is still active; if they have not moved within a specific timeframe, the relevant addresses should be locked or destroyed to prevent being hacked. Fundamentally, encryption is easier than decryption, and more powerful computing capabilities have positive implications. Cryptocurrencies will continue to exist even after the quantum era.

X platform product head Nikita Bier stated that X will officially launch the complete algorithm recommendation feature based on Grok next week, and has characterized it as the "most significant change" the X platform has made to date.

Musk stated that the X platform will release a major artificial intelligence algorithm update next week and plans to open source it simultaneously.

Vitalik Buterin posted on the X platform stating that algorithmic stablecoins belong to true DeFi. He believes that if there are high-quality algorithmic stablecoins backed by ETH, even if the majority of liquidity is supported by CDP holders holding negative algorithmic dollars, the ability to transfer counterparty risk to market makers remains an important feature. Even if algorithmic stablecoins are backed by RWA, if they can ensure sufficient collateral in the event of a single RWA failure through over-collateralization and diversified allocation, it is also an effective improvement in risk characteristics for holders.He pointed out that the industry should develop in these directions and gradually move away from using the dollar as a pricing unit, shifting towards a more universal diversified index. Additionally, the current operation of depositing USDC into Aave does not fall under the aforementioned category.

According to CoinDesk, the Brazilian Congress's Science, Technology, and Innovation Committee has approved a bill report aimed at banning algorithmic stablecoins.The bill will prohibit the issuance or trading of stablecoins like USDe from Ethena and Frax, which maintain their value through algorithms rather than fully collateralized assets, requiring all stablecoins issued in Brazil to be fully backed by segregated reserve assets. The bill also raises transparency requirements and classifies the issuance of uncollateralized stablecoins as a new criminal offense, with violators facing up to eight years in prison. For stablecoins issued abroad (such as USDT and USDC), the new regulations require that only companies authorized to operate in Brazil can offer such assets, and exchanges are responsible for ensuring that their issuers comply with regulatory standards similar to those in Brazil, or else they must bear the related risk management responsibilities themselves. The bill still needs to be reviewed by Brazil's Finance and Taxation Committee and the Constitution, Justice, and Citizenship Committee before being submitted to the Senate to become formal law.

According to Cointelegraph, the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea has upgraded its virtual asset trading analysis intelligence system VISTA and introduced automated detection algorithms to combat improper cryptocurrency trading.The algorithm employs a sliding window grid search technique to automatically identify potential price manipulation ranges, reducing reliance on manual investigations. Performance testing has shown that the system has successfully detected all known manipulation periods and previously hard-to-detect abnormal ranges.The Financial Supervisory Service has allocated a budget of 170 million Korean won (approximately $116,000) for AI performance upgrades in 2026. Future plans include automatically identifying networks of colluding trading accounts, analyzing abnormal trading patterns of thousands of cryptocurrency assets, and tracking the sources of manipulated funds.

According to CoinDesk, the quantum-resistant cryptography specialist BTQ Technologies (BTQ) recently announced a solution to protect the Bitcoin blockchain, called "Bitcoin Quantum," an open-source fork testnet that is said to be capable of addressing quantum challenges.Chris Tam, head of partnerships at BTQ, stated that Bitcoin Quantum is a publicly operable network where miners, developers, researchers, and users can stress-test against quantum transactions and reveal the trade-offs in actual operation before discussions about mainnet upgrades become urgent.The system includes a block explorer and mining pool, providing instant accessibility. Tam explained that in August 2024, the quantum-resistant algorithm known as "Dilithium" (officially named the Module-Lattice-based Digital Signature Algorithm ML-DSA) will be standardized in the United States, and this algorithm is the technology adopted by the Bitcoin Quantum network. This algorithm has not yet been widely applied in rapidly innovating fields like cryptocurrency, primarily due to its high operational costs.Compared to the digital signatures used every time information is sent to the blockchain or even when sending a WhatsApp message, the data size of quantum-resistant algorithms increases by at least 200 times. Therefore, while there are methods to address quantum risks, they also pose problems, mainly reflected in performance and cost overhead during large-scale deployment.

Ethereum founder Vitalik commented on "Musk stated that the new X platform algorithm will be open-sourced in 7 days, including how to determine recommended search content for users, and this process will repeat every four weeks": "If done properly, this will be a very good move. I hope it can be verified and replicated. While it won't solve all problems, it can effectively address the concerns about algorithm transparency raised by myself and many other public members.""Furthermore, I actually think four weeks might be a bit too optimistic, as this means the algorithm needs to be updated frequently to prevent exploitation. The algorithm does need to be verifiable and replicable, so that users who feel they are being shadowbanned, downgraded, etc., can check the execution code of the algorithm to understand why their posts are not being seen."

BitMine Chairman Tom Lee posted on the X platform, stating that typically during the last holiday trading period of the year, many institutional investors choose to exit the market, shifting the dominant forces in the market towards algorithmic trading and robotic trading programs. Additionally, the selling behavior driven by tax avoidance at the end of the year compounds these factors, collectively shaping the market dynamics in the last few days of December.Tom Lee previously noted in BitMine when disclosing the purchase of 44,463 ETH last week that as the year-end holidays approach, overall market activity tends to decline. Tax-related selling can exert temporary pressure on cryptocurrency and related stock prices, and this impact is usually most pronounced between December 26 and December 30. BitMine is adjusting its market strategy based on this seasonal characteristic.