Since we're discussing new possible directions for the project anyway- I would be able to dedicate more cycles to creating an abstracting over various quantum computing implementations (see a list here[1]).
I don't think it's an either/or wrt blockchain stuff, and there's probably even some overlap. But I would plan on doing it in Python (not Java or Scala). [1] https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/1474/what-programming-languages-are-available-for-quantum-computers
