From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd@echeque.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 1997 09:05:38 +0800
To: Jim Choate <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: Re: FCPUNX:Elliptic Curve Tidbit
Message-ID: <199712120047.QAA24455@proxy4.ba.best.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 04:01 PM 12/9/97 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
> Certicom estimates the difficulty of the warmup exercises thus:
>
>  > Using a network of 3000 computers, it is expected that the
>  > 79-bit exercise could be solved in a matter of hours, the
>  > 89-bit in a matter of days, and the 97-bit in a matter of
>  > weeks.
>
> Harley and Baisley applied 6 computers to ECCp-79 and solved it in a
> bit under 10 days, which would have amounted to less than half an hour
> had they had 3000 machines to throw at the problem.

In that case, 240 bit keys, as used by Pegwit and Kong, should take 
70 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 years on a network
of three thousand computers, assuming that the scaling law claimed by
Certicom holds true.
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