Could the decentralized world designed on blockchain technology win the battle with a large-scale quantum laptop of the nightmares?
News that 2 groups of Chinese scientists have achieved quantum advantage — a technical term for once a computer will perform functions on the far side that of a classical pc — is also the signal that we've got actually entered a replacement era. whereas Google’s 54-qubit quantum processor, Sycamore, became the primary wide celebrated example of early-stage quantum computing, the most recent news out of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei is that the best proof nonetheless that we've got crossed the data rubicon.
But despite several reasons to be excited by these developments, there are reasons to fret, too. whereas we'd all thirstily look the day after we will predict traffic jams, consign animal testing to the history books, or pinpoint someone’s chance of obtaining cancer so engineer a unique beat its tremendous power features a dark aspect.
Perhaps most terrific for a society so dependent on the web, quantum-level computing puts all of our digital infrastructures in danger. Our up-to-date net is constructed — the utilization of codes and keys to secure personal communication and storage of knowledge. except for cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH), for whom this idea is prime, one sufficiently powerful quantum computer might mean the felony of billions of bucks valuable or the destruction of a whole blockchain altogether. With digital signatures suddenly simply forgeable, the very concept of wallet “ownership” can appear quaint.
(David Chaum, Cointelegraph, 2021)