What will happen to Bitcoin after the advent of a quantum computing?
The crypto community should be ready for the inevitability of quantum computing: It’s not as distant a future as it might seem.
Description: What is the impact quantum computers might have on the Bitcoin blockchain? Let’s find it out?
The quantum computer has been one of the main “spookers” for Bitcoin followers for many years. Various experts have repeatedly argued that its emergence would jeopardize the very existence of the network, which for more than ten years since its launch, no one has managed to crack.
Speculation on this topic intensified last year, when NASA was published on the site, but soon deleted a document with insider information about Google’s success in this direction and the company’s achievement of “quantum superiority”. In the media, the information was replicated by The Financial Times, a reputable British publication.
The document, in particular, reported that using a processor called Sycamore with 53 cubits (quantum analog bits of a classic computer), Google experts were able in a few minutes to perform quantum computing, which even the most powerful supercomputers today would take thousands of years.
What is quantum computing?
A quantum computer is a computing device that uses quantum mechanics phenomena to transmit and process data. The idea of quantum computing was first proposed in the early 1980s, but a full-fledged universal quantum computer is still a hypothetical device, the possibility of developing which is associated with the serious development of quantum theory.
The main difference between a quantum computer and usual for all of us home devices is in information presentation. Traditional computers based on transistors and silicon chips use binary code to process information. A bit has two basic states — zero and one, and can only be in one of them.
A quantum computer operates on the principle of superposition, and instead of bits, quantum bits known as qubits are used. Qubits also have two basic states, zero and one. However, thanks to the superposition, qubit can take values obtained by combining them and be in all these states simultaneously.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yq2yv8ya0ixjha6/2.webp?dl=0
This is the parallelism of quantum calculations, i.e. there is no need to go through all possible states of the system. Besides, to describe the exact state of the system a quantum computer doesn’t need huge computational power and amount of RAM because to calculate a system of 100 particles only 100 qubits are enough and not a trillion trillion bits.
What is quantum superiority?
The term “quantum superiority” for the point where quantum computers can do what classic computers can’t, was suggested back in 2012 by John Preskill, professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology. In his article for Quanta Magazine he writes that if the news of Google’s breakthrough is true, it’s an outstanding achievement in experimental physics and a testament to the unprecedented development of quantum computing hardware.
However, he says there’s one catch:
“Google admits that the task their machine solved at an astonishing speed was carefully chosen to demonstrate the superiority of the quantum computer. There’s no practical point in solving it. Briefly, the quantum computer performed an arbitrarily chosen sequence of instructions, after which all the qubits were measured, getting a bit string at the output. It is quantum calculation of very small structure. Yes, to a classical computer such a task is extremely difficult, but the answer is not too substantial.”
However, he is convinced that Google’s achievement is an important milestone in the development of quantum computing applications:
“I think that the coming era needed a separate name and came up with a “noisy intermediate level quantum” or NISQ. It rhymes with the word “risk”. “Intermediate level” is about the size of quantum computers that are becoming more and more available. At this rate, they will soon be able to perform tasks that are impossible for today’s supercomputers… The Google team has proved that it is possible to build a sufficiently large and accurate quantum machine to solve previously impossible tasks. Let’s consider it the beginning of a new era — the era of noisy quanta of intermediate level or NISQ.”
Is the threat to cryptocurrencies real?
A large part of the crypto community, however, agree that such a threat, if any, is very low and that statements that quantum computing will make blockchain technology useless are overly exaggerated.
For example, in 2018, Jeffrey Tucker, editor of the online magazine of the American Institute for Economic Research, wrote about it in his article. Quoting Dr. Gavin Brennen, a specialist in quantum physics at McQuory University in Australia, he expressed belief that given the level of quantum computing power now available, negative scenarios are impossible. In particular, it was noted that the existing quantum infrastructure has a relatively low quantum gate rate compared to what is required to hack a cryptographic key.
As noted by Jeffrey Tucker, in the next 10 years, the speed of gate may increase to 100 GHz, but will also evolve and ASIC-devices that are used to process PoW-functions in the network of Bitcoin. According to Tucker, it will take about 10 years to develop a potentially dangerous technology, but it is likely to become obsolete by the time it becomes available.
Commenting on the news of Google’s “quantum supremacy”, well-known cryptographer and Bitcoin developer Peter Todd also denied the possible threat for BTC:
“It doesn’t mean anything because Google’s quantum breakthrough focuses on a primitive type of quantum computing that’s extremely far from hacking of cryptography of Bitcoin. We don’t even know if scaling quantum computers is possible. It’s very likely that adding qubits will cause exponential cost increases.”
Andreas Antonopoulos, a well-known entrepreneur and preacher of cryptophilosophy, spoke in a similar vein:
“This quantum superiority lies in the use of quantum computers to solve certain problems. These are not the problems we talk about when we mention cryptography hacking.”
How can we prepare for the era of quantum calculations?
So far, industry experts suggest it’ll take about ten years to break into Bitcoin. In this regard, leading companies in the cryptography industry are already working on new, quantum-resistant cryptography methods, which one day will ensure the safety of blockchains. Here are some examples of the work that is being done.
In the summer of 2015, the U.S. National Security Agency announced its intention to convert its network security to quantum-resistant or postquantum public key encryption methods. Since then, NSA has been working with industry leaders in an effort to “provide a robust set of quantum-resistant algorithms ready to protect U.S. government systems.
NIST USA holds contest
The competitive struggle for post quantum cryptographic algorithms is in full swing. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has received over 80 applications for the development of quantum-resistant algorithms. What matters here is this: NIST is the gold standard in the cryptographic community, and even the U.S. National Security Agency uses their protection technologies. The contest is expected to last until 2022. Most likely, by that time we will have seen a really working quantum-resistant algorithm.
The Quantum Resistant Ledger
Naturally, many projects are trying to win the NIST contest, promising to develop a post quantum blockchain as soon as possible. One of such projects — The Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL) — uses an extensible address format. The project team claims to be using Quantum Resistant algorithms. However, due to the novelty of the technology, it is still difficult to determine how effective it is.
Praxxis
The scientist and cryptographer David Chaum, who once invented digital money and founded the Elixxir blockchain-based anonymous messaging and payment platform, is now working on Praxxis’ “quantum-resistant crypto project”. He claims it uses quantum-resistant signatures that protect users from metadata leaks. More details will be available in Praxxis’ whitepaper later this year.
HyperCash
The cross-platform HyperCash cryptographic software protects itself from quantum computing with a “quantum-resistant signature” in a “dual-chain” ecosystem. The project proposes using postquantum meshes of RingCT protocols in combination with zero-disclosure proof technology for an additional level of security. The signature system in HyperCash “supports multiple postquantum signature schemes”.
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