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Quantum Witch is a story of religious oppression, queer emancipation, and a dancing skeleton that hopes to popularise the ‘plotformer’ genre

by admin May 29, 2025

You might not have heard of Quantum Witch, but if you’ve an affinity for pixel-art platformers with engaging story-beats, meta-narratives, and an array of kooky characters, then you should be all over it. To just call Quantum Witch a colourful platformer with a strong narrative (read: ‘plotformer’) is to do it a disservice, though.

Quantum Witch is so much more than its vibrant pixels; it is NikkiJay’s personal story of fleeing a religious cult, embracing her LGBTQ+ identity, and seeking solace in video games. There’s a dark undercurrent, but ultimately, Nikki chooses to tell her story – and a story that many others will no doubt see themselves in – with humour and pride.

To get a better idea of exactly what informed Quantum Witch and how the indie ‘plotformer’ came together, VG247 sat down with NikkiJay to ask how growing up in a religious cult led to the development of the game and what she hopes audiences will get from it.

The below interview discusses religious trauma, coercive control, and the abuse of power.

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VG247: I’m aware that Quantum Witch is largely informed by your own personal experiences of fleeing a religious cult; would you mind sharing some more about your experience, and how it has informed Quantum Witch’s story and characters?

Nikki: I was born into the group and my family on both sides were third generation. Age 10, I needed my tonsils out and I had to tell the surgeon that I would rather die than accept certain medical treatments. As a 10-year-old, it’s one of the questions they ask when you go for CPTSD diagnosis: “did you at any point honestly really believe you were going to die?” Yeah, I was told I had to be prepared for that. I had to die for God if that was the option that was presented to me. Either take this medical treatment that God said I couldn’t have or die. I had to choose death. This cult literally kills kids for God.

A lot of people stayed because the alternative was to lose your entire support structure and social network. You were literally by yourself with nothing, which was the option I chose in the end. It’s high coercive control. This way, they say that you have the personality God wants you to have. Religious control and abuse of that power is the biggest theme that made it into Quantum Witch. It is very much again about urgency and choice: I think if people have been through similar things, it’s going to resonate with them.

VG247: During the demo, I got the impression that Ren is largely not interested in the religious beliefs shared with her by others in Quantum Witch, but she still appears to have a fascination with the Old Gods. I have two questions about this: is Ren on the fence, so to speak, about her beliefs? Does this align with any of your thoughts and feelings about religion now?

Nikki: Yeah, I am agnostic. I am a skeptic. I have to be open to the possibilities. A skeptic who isn’t open to possibilities isn’t a skeptic. They’re a cynic, and Ren is very much a skeptic. The majority of the characters in the game are just aspects of me that I’ve made into a character, it’s just a little piece of me that I’ve enhanced without turning it into a stereotype as far as I can.

Tyra [Ren’s partner] is more cynical: ‘come on, it’s nonsense’. And Ren’s like, ‘no, let’s go find out’. Her desire to go explore is going to lead her into things that she shouldn’t have explored in the way that she’s going to. But yeah, she is definitely that part of me who would like for there to be magic.

Image credit: NikkiJay

VG247: Quantum Witch’s marketplace – which features unnamed characters that bear uncanny resemblances to some iconic video game mascots – is what I assume to be a representation of some of your favourite games. The game itself regularly reminded me of themes and mechanics from Undertale, The Binding of Isaac, and even Stardew Valley. What other games or pieces of media helped inspire Quantum Witch, and how?

Nikki: I love Undertale. What I loved about Undertale is the mixture of all those styles and then you’d be talking to a character and suddenly you have to play a really fast reaction game. I can’t do that. I’m too old. But it was a big inspiration in the style of game I wanted to create.

As for the reason why the video game characters are there in the plot of [Quantum Witch’s] story; they do tie into the plot and there’s a little hint that they say. And I just loved putting in my alternate takes on who these characters were. You might know Paul Rose from Digitizer. At the very beginning of the project, I had all my story beats worked out. This is what’s going to happen. This is how it’s all going to interact, but I could not – for the life of me – start it.

I couldn’t build the bridges between these beats and Rose helped me a lot. He did a script treatment and some of the dialogue in the marketplace is directly from him; [one of the characters you meet is] talking about pills and I was like, ‘that that just fits in perfectly because there is a character later on who might need that pill’. It’s also a bit of a cue for me to have the characters talk about medication. .

I also wanted to add some queer flavor to them, so Princess Nectarine – who is similar to but legally distinct from a certain Nintendo character – is in a polycule with Bowser and Mario and they like to roleplay kidnapping. I did not set out to make a queer game. It’s turned out that way because I can’t help it, but it’s not all these characters are.

VG247: I know you’re a solo developer and this is a largely solo project, but I’m aware you’ve received some help with the whole endeavour. You mentioned Paul Rose. So could you tell me more about the people who have helped you with creating Quantum Witch and what they did?

Nikki: I must absolutely shout out Jerden Cooke for the music. We composed a lot of it together, [with] me mostly on the ukulele which you can hear in Ren’s theme. I don’t know if you’ve seen the video clip of David Lynch helping compose Laura’s Theme from Twin Peaks. Working with him is like that. I got some fantastic music which was like the music I could hear in my head when I started playing on the ukulele. He was able to put it down, basically extract it from my head, and put it into a word file.

And Paul Rose; I knew him through Digitizer meetups. We just got talking on Twitter one day and met up. He’s a great guy and things came about quite naturally because it was when Covid hit and a lot of TV work got cancelled. I said to him, look, you should get yourself on Fiverr. Put your writing services out there because people should be paying for this. I will be your first customer, and so I was! Without his help, this would have still been a collection of little story beats that I would have had no idea how to wire together.

And I’ve always wanted to work with Stephanie Sterling. What if I just ping her on Bluesky and say, “Hey, want to write a chapter of this game? It’s got a dancing skeleton in it.” She said, “Yeah, I’m in.” She said that when she started to do it, she wasn’t entirely sure whether it would be the right project because she just saw a [dancing] skeleton.

The more she wrote for [Quantum Witch] and the more she played the game, she went, “Yeah, this is my wheelhouse,” and she poured her religious trauma into it, which happened to just fit absolutely perfectly. It’s like I could not have asked for a better group of people to work with, and this is kind of what I want to say to indie developers who are solo. You’re not alone. You might just want one name on the credit, but it takes a village to raise a child.

Image credit: NikkiJay

VG247: I was taken aback by just how cosy the game is. Admittedly, even with the subject matter, I didn’t expect – largely given the art style – for this to be all doom and gloom, but I definitely didn’t expect something so jovial and honestly, straight-up funny. How did you decide that this was the approach you wanted to take when creating Ren’s story?

Nikki: [Stardew Valley], Chrono Trigger and Paper Mario: Thousand-Year Door are my three most played games. I love the style of Stardew Valley and I love that there’s some darkness hidden in Stardew Valley. I really liked the humor in it. I mean, if you thought I shouldn’t be laughing at this, but I am, then that’s an achievement. That’s exactly what I wanted. My main coping mechanism is humor. I’m not saying it’s a healthy coping mechanism, but it kind of works. And I mean, I was heavily influenced by reading a lot of Douglas Adams. and he was able to find humor in the most bleak situations.

And the graphical style… When I started this, I couldn’t draw a convincing stick figure. I look at the art that I did four years ago when I started messing about with this idea and it’s just embarrassing. Objectively terrible, but my main influences were Stardew Valley and The Darkside Detective. I loved the low-resolution style art, but there was so much character in them. So, I took a pixel art course on Udemy and a color theory course and… then just found, hey, I can do this now. That’s weird.

VG247: While looking into Quantum Witch and yourself, I found a lovely quote of yours from The Guardian: “A lot of religion is about giving up autonomy to some mystical power that you’ve never seen, heard or met. Over the course of the game, Ren takes that agency back… It’s a queer emancipation story.” Could you expand on this?

Nikki: The consequence of being yourself in a group that says ‘no, being yourself is wrong’ is that you just get thrown out. It’s weird because I think of my experiences as unique, but the themes they really do seem to be universal. Stephanie Sterling from The Jimquisition: she wrote a chapter of the later part of the game. I originally said to her, can you write these three scenes? She came back and said “I couldn’t stop writing. I just love this universe” It’s weird, because you wouldn’t know it was a different author. The religious oppression of queer people is the same wherever you go.

I’m really hoping just that I’ve got that balance right between a game that’s fun and cozy and humorous, – that there is a dancing skeleton who can see through time – but also has that deeper meaning and that message that you take back control.

A lot of people would look at this and think ‘you must be anti-religion’ and I’m 100% for freedom of religion, but that also means I’m 100% for freedom from religion. Whether you’ve got faith or not, nobody wants somebody else’s faith forced on you. You can’t have freedom of religion without freedom from religion.

Image credit: NikkiJay

VG247: How long is Quantum Witch set to be, and how many endings will there be? I know you also mentioned some side quests having various conclusions, as well as the game’s main endings being different depending on your decisions.

Nikki: I watched a tester play from beginning to end. It took him about three and a half hours, and he got my second favorite ending. He had questions about the lore and I said, “play it again and make different choices, and you’ll get a different ending, which will probably answer that for you.”

It’s difficult to say how many endings there are. There’s three definite categories of endings. There’s bleak. There’s interesting, where you kind of get a bittersweet ending, and then there’s the super happy ending, and there are variations on each of those. [These depend] on the characters you’ve helped. There’s also little puzzles that you can go and solve which can enhance the happy ending. It’s kind of like an open-world choose-your-own adventure book, but in pixel format.

If I’m going to do a full playthrough of all choices and all stories, I will easily put aside six or seven hours to do it and I wrote it. So, I’m not trying to discover it. I think it’s like The Stanley Parable in that sense.

VG247: I also learned that Quantum Witch could have been a novel. It could have initially started out that way and you then obviously decided to turn this into a game. How did that come about?

Nikki: One of my friends was doing the National Novel Writing November. I thought, I’ve got this story in my head which might fit, so I started writing it. I don’t know if anybody’s realized this, [but video games] are quite difficult to make, and novels are very easy because you just type… I was wrong and I really did not enjoy writing it.

I decided, thinking back on my childhood, I want to make this into a game. I want to make this interactive. Choice is a big theme. I want to give the player a choice. And it did end up as a point and click [game] for a while, rather than a plotformer. No matter what you do, it is a valid choice. There are no game over screens in Quantum Witch. Anything you do is just a part of the story and the game is over when you get the credits.

Quantum Witch is a surprisingly cosy and jovial take on topics of religious trauma and queer identities, but if your curiosity about this game is piqued, it’s up to you to find out all of its secrets. NikkiJay stresses that there’s so much to discover for those who are eager to explore the game and discover all of its various paths, endings, and dialogue.

For those who want to try Quantum Witch out, you can find a demo for the game on Steam, and it’ll also be participating in Steam’s Next Fest during June.

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May 29, 2025 0 comments

Crypto Trends

Is Free Will an Illusion? Quantum Experiments Aim to Find Out

by admin May 29, 2025

In brief

Researchers are designing quantum experiments to test whether human choices are truly independent of outside forces.
The new work challenges the assumption of measurement independence in quantum entanglement.
UC San Diego Professor of Philosophy Eddy Chen says defining free will remains a deeply contested issue.

New quantum physics experiments may soon test a question as old as humankind: Do we truly have free will?

Researchers say they are closing in on a way to determine whether our choices are truly our own or dictated by hidden laws of physics, according to a report published in New Scientist on Tuesday.

Quantum experiments have been designed to test the so-called “measurement independence assumption,” which proposes that hidden variables do not influence the settings chosen by experimenters, thereby proving or disproving the existence of free will.

“Many religions resolve the conflict between the concept of an omniscient God and God’s commandment not to commit sin by assuming human beings have partial free will,” University of Seville Professor Adan Cabello wrote in the report. “But if partial free will is not possible, neither is this resolution.”

In the report, the researchers developed new tests based on Bell’s inequality, also known as Bell’s theorem, a principle introduced by physicist John Bell in 1964 to demonstrate whether entangled particles exhibit correlations that can’t be explained by classical physics.

This assumption tests quantum entanglement, where particles appear to coordinate their behavior instantaneously across large distances.

Defining free will

In quantum computers, entanglement links qubits so that the state of one instantly affects the state of another, regardless of their physical separation, allowing the system to perform complex calculations in multiple directions simultaneously.

By loosening that assumption and considering the possibility that choices aren’t entirely free, the team hoped to determine whether the connections between entangled particles—known as non-local correlations, which are instantaneous across vast distances—are a fundamental feature of quantum mechanics or the result of some hidden force at play.

The concept of free will has deep roots in Western thought, emerging in ancient Greece with philosophers such as Aristotle, and shaped by Christian theology’s emphasis on moral responsibility. It later evolved through Enlightenment ideals of individual autonomy.

According to the University of California at San Diego professor of philosophy Eddy Chen, any attempt to link quantum mechanics to free will depends heavily on how free will is defined—something even philosophers and physicists often disagree on.

“Even those who’ve studied this for years struggle to define it, and seemingly clear definitions remain controversial,” Chen told Decrypt. “If you accept one, others may not. So whether quantum mechanics can prove or disprove free will depends on how free will is defined.”

A fellow of the John Bell Institute for the Foundations of Physics, Chen said that while science can inform philosophical questions, it often remains neutral on matters involving values, ultimate causes, or the nature of reality itself.

He explained that issues like free will or randomness may have scientific implications if certain assumptions are made, but those assumptions themselves are open to challenge and scrutiny.

“Some debates, especially about philosophical concepts like free will, rely on reasoning rather than empirical testing,” he said. “Science can settle questions with clear definitions, but murkier concepts are harder to resolve experimentally.”

Hidden links

The researchers’ new approach expands on Bell’s theorem by exploring scenarios where experimenters might have only partial free will, meaning their choices are not entirely independent, but still contain some degree of autonomy. According to Chen, this doesn’t weaken the argument, but broadens its implications.

“They’re not saying we lack free will. Even if someone has only partial free will, the theorem still applies,” Chen said. “As long as there’s some freedom, local interactions alone can’t produce quantum predictions. So Bell’s theorem applies not just to full freedom, but also to universes with partial freedom.”

When asked what might be controlling the “other half” of human choice if free will is only partial, Chen said finding this answer would require a radically new theory—one that not only explains everyday physics but also accounts for the hidden links between distant decisions.

“A skeptic might argue for a new physical theory that explains not only what we see, but also the hidden connections between your choice and mine, even though we’re far apart,” he said.

“Until such a theory exists, we take this seriously. This theorem may apply in cases where no such local theory can work. It’s not just hard to construct—it’s mathematically impossible.”

Quantum experiments may not resolve the debate over free will, but they are beginning to change our understanding of it.

Even a little bit of choice, researchers say, is enough to rule out simple explanations, suggesting the real mystery isn’t whether free will exists, but how much of it we actually have.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair and Josh Quittner

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A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.

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May 29, 2025 0 comments

Quantum Computing Threat Sparks Surge in Privacy Altcoins Like Best Wallet Token

GameFi Guides

Quantum Computing Threat Makes Privacy Altcoins Like Best Wallet Token Explode

by admin May 27, 2025

Trusted Editorial content, reviewed by leading industry experts and seasoned editors. Ad Disclosure

Quantum computing is no longer just theory – it’s edging closer to reality. The crypto world is now buzzing with warnings about how this powerful new tech could one day crack the encryption behind Bitcoin and other blockchains.

Experts call it ‘Q-Day’ – the moment when quantum machines become capable of breaking classical cryptography.

While quantum computing and the ability to break cryptography aren’t here yet, recent developments are forcing the crypto community to ask some tough questions. How do we future-proof our digital assets? Can the security we rely on today survive the next wave of innovation?

At the same time, projections show the quantum tech industry could reach $93B in revenue by 2040. That kind of growth points to serious momentum.

Pair that with the rise of tools for offline Bitcoin transfers, and it’s obvious: crypto is evolving fast. Security and privacy are now top priorities for users who want to stay ahead of the curve. Best Wallet Token ($BEST), one of the best altcoins right now, is making waves in this context.

Read on to learn how quantum computing benefits privacy altcoins like Best Wallet Token.

Why Is Everyone Talking About Quantum?

The excitement – and fear – around quantum computing is grounded in how it fundamentally changes data processing.

Unlike traditional computers, which process information as bits (ones and zeroes), quantum computers use qubits.

These qubits can exist in multiple states simultaneously, allowing quantum computers to accomplish specific tasks, like factoring very large numbers, at speeds previously thought impossible.

This matters because modern cryptography, including the encryption that secures Bitcoin and Ethereum, is based on encryption that would take classical computers thousands of years to solve. But quantum computers? They could potentially do it in hours.

That’s what ‘Q-Day’ refers to – the theoretical point in time when quantum computing becomes powerful enough to break public-key cryptography.

While we’re not there yet, the warning signs are flashing. Major players like Google and IBM are actively investing in quantum research. Governments are pouring billions into quantum development. And the potential fallout for crypto security is real.

To make matters more pressing, tools like Darkwire are now enabling Bitcoin transfers without internet access.

Source: Darkwire

Using LoRa radio, it relays transactions across offline nodes until reaching a connected exit point. Built for disaster zones and censorship resistance, it shows how crypto is adapting to extreme threats, but also new opportunities.

Enter Best Wallet Token ($BEST) – Privacy Without the Paranoia

Best Wallet Token ($BEST) isn’t just another token in a crowded space. It’s the driving force behind a bold new ecosystem that’s shaking up how users store, send, and stake their crypto.

Designed to challenge outdated players like MetaMask, Best Wallet combines sleek design with advanced functionality. It’s the gateway to a secure, seamless, and modern crypto experience, and the $BEST token is the key that unlocks it all.

By buying and holding $BEST, you get reduced transaction fees, early access to new crypto project launches, and higher staking rewards within the app.

Most importantly, Best Wallet places a strong focus on security. The app is built on Fireblocks’ cutting-edge MPC-CMP technology, offering robust protection without sacrificing speed or usability.

Thanks to its Multi-Party Computation (MPC) implementation, Best Wallet keeps your crypto safe against potential data vulnerabilities.

Your private key, the gateway to your crypto, is split across your device and an external server. Because of this, nobody can access your full key, rendering your wallet virtually unhackable even in the case of a breach.

And features like the app’s Upcoming Tokens allow users to safely buy into vetted crypto presales directly from the app – no scammy websites, no rug pull roulette.

Even the presale of $BEST itself started inside the Best Wallet app, rewarding early adopters and adding a layer of exclusivity.

It’s the kind of ecosystem that doesn’t just look toward the future of crypto – it’s already building it.

Why Buying $BEST Now Could Be a Power Move

Currently priced at just $0.025085 and with over $12.7M already raised during presale, $BEST is gathering serious momentum.

But this price won’t last. As presale stages progress, prices are bound to rise. With long-term forecasts predicting $BEST could hit $0.072 by the end of 2025 (a +187% increase from today’s price), the upside is clear.

Let’s break it down. If you were to buy $1K worth of $BEST today at $0.025, you’d get 39,866 tokens. $BEST’s staking options currently offer competitive APY – let’s assume a modest 15% over one year. That brings your token count to around 45,846.

Now, even if $BEST only hits a lower estimated price, like $0.24 (according to our 2026 forecast), your total investment could one day be worth roughly $11K – a potential 10x return. If it climbs to $0.62? That’s a potential ROI of over $28K.

Timing matters, though. With growing user adoption, a fast-moving roadmap, and a clear market fit, buying $BEST today looks like a smart move for anyone who cares about privacy, profit, and the future of crypto.

Brace for the Quantum Future

No one knows exactly when Q-Day will arrive, but the smart money isn’t waiting.

As the conversation around quantum computing and blockchain security heats up, new crypto projects focused on privacy, like Best Wallet Token, are carving out their space in the new world order.

Want to stay ahead of the curve? You might want to start with a wallet that’s built for it.

Remember that all crypto investments carry risk. Always do your own research (DYOR) before investing. This article is not meant as financial advice.

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.

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May 27, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

Cracking Bitcoin-Like Encryption Through Quantum Computing Could be 20x Easier Than Thought

by admin May 27, 2025

Shaurya is the Co-Leader of the CoinDesk tokens and data team in Asia with a focus on crypto derivatives, DeFi, market microstructure, and protocol analysis.

Shaurya holds over $1,000 in BTC, ETH, SOL, AVAX, SUSHI, CRV, NEAR, YFI, YFII, SHIB, DOGE, USDT, USDC, BNB, MANA, MLN, LINK, XMR, ALGO, VET, CAKE, AAVE, COMP, ROOK, TRX, SNX, RUNE, FTM, ZIL, KSM, ENJ, CKB, JOE, GHST, PERP, BTRFLY, OHM, BANANA, ROME, BURGER, SPIRIT, and ORCA.

He provides over $1,000 to liquidity pools on Compound, Curve, SushiSwap, PancakeSwap, BurgerSwap, Orca, AnySwap, SpiritSwap, Rook Protocol, Yearn Finance, Synthetix, Harvest, Redacted Cartel, OlympusDAO, Rome, Trader Joe, and SUN.

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May 27, 2025 0 comments

NFT Gaming

It Might Actually Be 20 Times Easier for Quantum Computers to Break Bitcoin, Google Says

by admin May 27, 2025

Google just dropped a new research paper, and Bitcoin maxis may want to do some quick math. The tech giant’s quantum team found that breaking the RSA encryption protecting everything from your bank account to your Bitcoin wallet might need 20 times fewer quantum resources than previously estimated.

“Planning the transition to quantum-safe cryptosystems requires understanding the cost of quantum attacks on vulnerable cryptosystems,” Google Quantum Researcher Craig Gidney wrote. “In Gidney+Ekerå 2019, I co-published an estimate stating that 2048 bit RSA integers could be factored in eight hours by a quantum computer with 20 million noisy qubits. In this paper, I substantially reduce the number of qubits required.”

“I estimate that a 2048 bit RSA integer could be factored in less than a week by a quantum computer with less than a million noisy qubits,” Gidney argued.

“This is a 20-fold decrease in the number of qubits from our previous estimate,” the Google researcher said in an official blog post.

Image: Google

But it’s not like it’s going to happen anytime soon. For context, IBM’s Condor (the most powerful quantum computer to date) tops out at 1,121 qubits while Google’s own Sycamore runs on 53. So your coins are still safe—for now. The trajectory is what matters, and it’s pointing in a direction that should make anyone holding crypto sit up and pay attention.

The breakthrough, Google says, comes from two places: “better algorithms and smarter error correction.” On the algorithm side, researchers figured out how to make calculations for modular exponentiations—the heavy mathematical lifting in encryption—twice as fast, whereas the error correction improvements is possible because the team tripled density of the logical qubits space by adding a new layer of error correction, effectively packaging more useful quantum operations into the same physical space.

They also deployed something called “magic state cultivation”—basically a trick to make special quantum ingredients (called T states) stronger and more reliable, so quantum computers can perform complex tasks more efficiently without wasting extra resources—to reduce the workspace needed for basic quantum operations.

Image: ArXiv

Why should Bitcoin holders care about Quantum computers?

Bitcoin relies on elliptic curve cryptography, which works on similar mathematical principles to RSA. If quantum computers can crack RSA faster than expected, Bitcoin’s security timeline just got compressed. The cryptocurrency’s 256-bit encryption is stronger than the older RSA keys Google studied, but not by as much as you might hope when dealing with exponential scaling.

And there are already experts trying to find ways to apply quantum tech to break Bitcoin.

As previously reported by Decrypt, Project 11, a quantum computing research group, launched a Bitcoin bounty worth nearly $85,000 for anyone who can break even a simplified version of Bitcoin’s encryption using a quantum computer. They’re testing keys ranging from 1 to 25 bits—tiny compared to Bitcoin’s 256-bit encryption, but it’s about tracking progress.

“Bitcoin’s security relies on elliptic curve cryptography. Quantum computers running Shor’s algorithm will eventually break it,” Project 11 wrote when announcing their challenge. “We’re testing how urgent the threat is.”

Bitcoin’s security relies on elliptic curve cryptography.
Quantum computers running Shor’s algorithm will eventually break it.

We’re testing how urgent the threat is.

— Project 11 (@qdayclock) April 16, 2025

The security implications extend beyond crypto. RSA and similar systems underpin global secure communications, from banking to digital signatures. Google noted that adversaries could already be collecting encrypted data now to decrypt later once quantum computers become available, so they are preparing for this imminent future.

“Google has therefore been encrypting traffic both in Chrome and internally, switching to the standardized version of ML-KEM once it became available,” Google said.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology released post-quantum cryptography standards last year and recommended phasing out vulnerable systems after 2030. Google’s research suggests that timeline might need acceleration.

IBM has plans for a 100,000-qubit quantum computer by 2033, partnering with the University of Tokyo and University of Chicago. Quantinuum aims to deliver a fully fault-tolerant quantum computer by 2029. These targets suddenly look more significant given Google’s findings.

Another thing to tackle is how much continuous runtime quantum machines support. The hypothetical million-qubit machine Google describes would need to run continuously for days, maintain extremely low error rates, and coordinate billions of operations without interruption. Current quantum computers can barely maintain coherence for minutes—so again, don’t panic.

The quantum threat isn’t immediate, but it’s accelerating faster than expected. The crypto community has already started working on quantum-resistant solutions. Solana developers introduced a quantum-resistant vault using hash-based signatures, while Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed forking the code of current blockchains to protect against quantum threats.

So it seems more likely that we’ll see some sort of anti-quantum hard fork in the future before we witness the first quantum hack of the Bitcoin blockchain—fingers crossed.

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A weekly AI journey narrated by Gen, a generative AI model.

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May 27, 2025 0 comments

Product Reviews

The Quest to Prove the Existence of a New Type of Quantum Particle

by admin May 26, 2025

When you swap two paraparticles, these hidden properties change in tandem. As an analogy, imagine that these properties are colors. Start with two paraparticles, one that’s internally red and another that’s internally blue. When they swap places, rather than keeping these colors, they both change in corresponding ways, as prescribed by the mathematics of the particular model. Perhaps the swap leaves them green and yellow. This quickly turns into a complex game, where paraparticles affect each other in unseen ways as they move around.

Meanwhile, Müller was also busy rethinking the DHR theorems. “It’s not always super transparent what they mean, because it’s in a very complicated mathematical framework,” he said.

His team took a new approach to the paraparticle question. The researchers considered the fact that quantum systems can exist in multiple possible states at once—what’s called a superposition. They imagined switching between the perspectives of observers who exist in these superposed states, each of whom describes their branch of reality slightly differently. If two particles are truly indistinguishable, they figured, then it won’t matter if the particles are swapped in one branch of the superposition and not in the other.

“Maybe if the particles are close by, I swap them, but if they are far away I do nothing,” Müller said. “And if they’re in a superposition of both, then I do the swapping in one branch, and nothing in the other branch.” Whether observers across branches label the two particles in the same way should make no difference.

This stricter definition of indistinguishability in the context of superpositions imposes new restrictions on the kinds of particles that can exist. When these assumptions hold, the researchers found that paraparticles are impossible. For a particle to be truly indistinguishable by measurement, as physicists expect elementary particles to be, it must be either a boson or fermion.

Although Wang and Hazzard published their paper first, it’s as though they saw Müller’s constraints coming. Their paraparticles are possible because their model rejects Müller’s starting assumption: The particles are not indistinguishable in the full sense required in the context of quantum superpositions. This comes with a consequence. While swapping two paraparticles has no effect on one person’s measurements, two observers, by sharing their data with each other, can determine whether the paraparticles have been swapped. That’s because swapping paraparticles can change how two people’s measurements relate to each other. In this sense, they could tell the two paraparticles apart.

This means there’s a potential for new states of matter. Where bosons can pack an endless number of particles into the same state, and fermions can’t share a state at all, paraparticles end up somewhere in the middle. They are able to pack just a few particles into the same state, before getting crowded and forcing others into new states. Exactly how many can be crammed together depends on the details of the paraparticle—the theoretical framework allows for endless options.

“I find their paper really fascinating, and there’s absolutely no contradiction with what we do,” Müller said.

The Road to Reality

If paraparticles exist, they’ll most likely be emergent particles, called quasiparticles, that show up as energetic vibrations in certain quantum materials.

“We might get new models of exotic phases, which were difficult to understand before, that you can now solve easily using paraparticles,” said Meng Cheng, a physicist at Yale University who was not involved in the research.

Bryce Gadway, an experimental physicist at Pennsylvania State University who sometimes collaborates with Hazzard, is optimistic that paraparticles will be realized in the lab in the next few years. These experiments would use Rydberg atoms, which are energized atoms with electrons that roam very far from their nuclei. This separation of the positive and negative charge makes Rydberg atoms especially sensitive to electric fields. You can build quantum computers out of interacting Rydberg atoms. They are also the perfect candidates for creating paraparticles.

“For a certain kind of Rydberg quantum simulator, this is kind of just what they would do naturally,” Gadway said about creating paraparticles. “You just prepare them and watch them evolve.”

But for now, the third kingdom of particles remains wholly theoretical.

“Paraparticles might become important,” said Wilczek, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist and inventor of anyons. “But at present they’re basically a theoretical curiosity.”

Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent publication of the Simons Foundation whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.

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May 26, 2025 0 comments