From blockchain technology to quantum computing, two entangled fields
If you allow me, let’s not be that technical but just informative for a moment.
When you thought you understood how blockchain technology worked, and learnt that it was something that went beyond Bitcion and cryptocurrencies, you’ve started noticing in the media tech articles including a brand new intelligible word that feels more like something from Star Trek, the adjective “quantum”.
But quantum technology is not something taken from a science fiction series, but an actual reality. Good examples of this are different companies which are exploring the use of quantum physics phenomena to create new technologies and improve current ones. Big tech companies such as Google, IBM or Alibaba are immerse in a “quantum race” to develop the first quantum computer able to offer greater computational capabilities than our current classical supercomputers (with its corresponding consequences for our society). And we don’t need to go to such big tech players as Google or IBM to see the application of quantum technologies in our daily lives. The main telco company in Spain, Telefónica, is already exploring the use of quantum technology to enhance the security of his commercial optic fibre networks.
And you may be wondering, what is this quantum physics thingy? I don’t get it. Quantum physics is the physics of the “very tiny”. When we move to an atomic level, we see that “strange” phenomena start to happen. One of these phenomena is the quantum entanglement, a property of fundamental particles, such as electrons and photons. When two of these particles physically interact they become intimately connected, even after being separated (and being thousands of kilometers apart). They become connected in a way that every modification over one of the particles will instantly be reflected in its entangled pair. Such a marvellous (and counterintuitive) phenomenon opens the door to exciting lines of work such as the Quantum Internet. Through the use of entangled particles, we may be able (and, with some restrictions, we already are) to transmit information between to distant points instantly, impressive right?
And what’s the role of blockchain technology in all this story? The basis of blockchain technology is cryptography. Current cryptographic primitives are based in the use of NP-hard mathematical problems to secure the information, such as the factoring of integer numbers or problems related to the use of discrete logarithmic curves. These problems are “hard”, and mainly irresolvable using classical computing, but quantum computers would be able to solve these problems almost instantly breaking the security of many of the current cryptographic techniques used around the globe (in the Internet, banking applications, blockchain, etc.). In order to be protected against this matter once the first commercial quantum computer appears, several cryptographers and blockchain platforms are exploring the use of cryptographic primitive resistant to quantum attacks (not based in these NP-hard problems solvable by quantum technology).
But a commercial quantum computer won’t be ready in the next few coming years then, what is the current contribution of quantum technology to the blockchain technology? Many cryptographic mechanisms in the blockchain ecosystem rely on the generation of random numbers, such as the generation of identity key pairs for users. Until know, we didn’t have a way of generating real random numbers, we could only rely on the use of pseudorandom generation algorithms that, although with a small probability, could lead to two users ending up with the same pair of keys (and therefore a shared identity in the network). Here is where quantum technology comes to the rescue. Thanks to the use of particles perturbed using quantum phenomena, we have a way of generating numbers which are completely, and naturally, random, and not just pseudorandom, with the subsequent security enhancement for blockchain technologies and its underlaying cryptography.
To conclude this brief post lets move on to a more exciting example of the use of quantum technology in the blockchain ecosystem. Blockchain networks structure information using blocks, and every new block is cryptographically linked with the previous one so that any change in the information of a validated block will affect previous blocks easily detecting malicious modifications over the stored information. To this respect, New Zealander researchers have proposed in a recent article the use of quantum entanglement to create a quantum blockchain in a way that instead of linking blocks, particles are used to store the blockchain information. These particles are entangled in time making impractical the forge of information. This means that in a quantum blockchain, information is “naturally” immutable. The photons that conform each validated “block” of the blockchain do not exist in the current moment but in the past, and they are accessible through their entanglement with the current (block) photon. Manipulating the current block (or a previous one if we had direct access to them) would mean directly breaking the blockchain in itself. This kind of concepts are the ones that made me fall in love with quantum technology.
The summary of the post is the following: quantum technology is slowly becoming a palpable reality with real potential to revolutionalize a great gamut of lines of work and technologies, being the quantum Internet and blockchain technology just a few quick examples. Remember a few years ago when we had a great disruptive technology called blockchain with potential to change things but that we didn’t really know how to use correctly? Well, know it's our time to go down the same path again with quantum technology. Lets see where it heads. These are exciting time to work in innovation.
And that’s all folks! One last comment for my dearest technical readers, if this was quite a shallow and general post for you, don’t worry, in following posts I will try to share a piece of all the knowledge I am adquiring through a lot of reading around cryptography, quantum computing and quantum information. Stay tuned!
