MARA Foundation to foster long-term adoption of Bitcoin, including resilience against quantum and security budget risks

MARA CEO Peter Thiel announced the formation of the non-profit MARA Foundation on Monday, representing the firm’s "strategic commitment to supporting the health of the Bitcoin network."

The organization is committed to the long-term health, resilience, and adoption of the Bitcoin protocol and said it will focus on the “free and open-source development of Bitcoin technologies” as part of its multi-pronged strategy.

MARA (MARA) is one of the largest bitcoin miners by hashpower and also the fourth-largest corporate bitcoin holder, according to The Block's data.

In addition to areas of concern typically supported by non-profit crypto advocacy groups, the MARA Foundation appears to take an opinionated stance on Bitcoin’s resilience to quantum computing, which not all Bitcoin advocates consider a legitimate threat.

According to the MARA Foundation’s website, the organization will support research and development of quantum-resistant tools, like so-called PQ wallets and proposals like BIP 360, co-authored by Isabel Foxen Duke, a market strategist for MARA. 

“Quantum computing is not an immediate threat to Bitcoin. But because the network evolves deliberately and upgrades take time, early preparation matters,” the foundation wrote on its website. 

While bitcoin’s quantum threat is largely theoretical at this point, some experts have raised concerns about the pace at which quantum computing is developing and the rising possibility that powerful enough machines will eventually be able to break the elliptic curve cryptography used by some Bitcoin addresses to derive private keys from exposed public addresses.

Estimates range widely for how many bitcoins may be at risk, though experts are primarily agreed that the risk is limited to addresses that have revealed their public keys, such as reused addresses or early "Satoshi-era" wallets.

The MARA Foundation will also direct resources to securing Bitcoin’s security budget, another long-term potential issue as the Bitcoin mining subsidy continues to shrink programmatically by half every four years and will eventually stop altogether, at which point Bitcoin miners will be entirely reliant on transaction fees as a source of revenue.

The "security budget" refers to the total economic incentives paid to miners, including the current 3.25 BTC mining subsidy and the cumulative fees from the transactions included in a block. If that block reward dips below the costs miners accrue for contributing hashpower to secure the network, Bitcoin could theoretically become more vulnerable to attacks.

As part of its mandate, the foundation said it aims to "support the development of a robust and healthy fee market for Bitcoin transactions."

The foundation is also focused on global, multi-lingual education initiatives, expanding access to self-custodial tools, and other areas of advocacy geared at policymakers and activists.