IS QUANTUM COMPUTING AN EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY?

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Is Quantum computing an existential threat to
Blockchain Technology?

• There is a lot of euphoria surrounding Bitcoin
  and other cryptocurrencies at the moment, and
  this has translated to exponential rises in
  prices over the last year. A lot of the hype
  surrounding cryptocurrencies is justified as
  nearly every industry in the world can benefit
  from blockchain technology in one form or
  another. But amidst all of the excitement, it is
  essential to evaluate whether the underlying
  technology is resistant to other emerging
  technologies, namely quantum computing.

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• Since the fundamental of blockchain technology is
  focused on ensuring security in a decentralized
  fashion, lets take a look at how quantum
  technology changes the equation when it comes to
  security.

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How Blockchains work Public Key Cryptography

• Public key cryptography relies on a pair of
  public and private keys to ensure secure,
  encrypted communication on an unsecured channel.
  Public key cryptography ensures that the message
  received by the receiver is untampered and also
  that the actual sender created it. For example,
  if two users Alice and Bob want to communicate
  with each other using public key cryptography,
  they both can generate public and private keys.

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• As the name suggests, public keys are
  broadcasted to the entire network while private
  keys are kept secure. Now, if Alice wants to send
  Bob an encrypted message, she can encrypt the
  message using Bobs private key and digitally
  sign the message using her private key. This
  ensures that the message received by Bob can only
  be decrypted by him and the digital signature
  proves that Alice was the creator of that
  message.

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• The security aspect of this cryptography scheme
  comes from the fact that given the public key, it
  is practically impossible to come up with the
  corresponding private key. In other words, there
  is no way other than guessing and checking
  different private keys. With the current
  computing resources we have, it would take an
  extraordinarily long time to find the correct
  private key.

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• . In other words, there is no way other than
  guessing and checking different private keys.
  With the current computing resources we have, it
  would take an extraordinarily long time to find
  the correct private key. Assuming that a
  classical computer tested a trillion keys a
  second, it would take up to 1.09 x 1019 years to
  guess the correct answer. To put numbers into
  perspective that is roughly about 785 million
  times longer than the age of the universe
  (approximately 14 billion years) because public
  key cryptography relies on prime numbers for key
  generation.

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The Quantum Threat

• As it exists, the current paradigm for digital
  security relies heavily on the sanctity of the
  assumptions underlying in the previous section.
  If quantum computers were to make our current
  security framework obsolete, it would also be a
  disaster not only for public key cryptography but
  for all other financial and banking systems as
  they exist today.

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• The quantum computing threat comes from the fact
  that quantum computing takes advantage of quantum
  bits or qubits that can exist in any
  superposition of values between 0 and 1 and can,
  therefore, process much more information than
  just 0 or 1, which is the limit of classical
  computing systems. As a result, quantum computers
  can handle many orders of magnitude more than
  traditional computers.

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• Currently, however, quantum computers can only
  work on a limited number of highly specific
  applications. Companies like Google and IBM are
  working on their implementations of quantum
  computers which are said to be a 100 million
  times faster than classical modes of computation.

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How Blockchain will keep up -

• If in the future, the threat of quantum computers
  becomes more pronounced to public key
  cryptography, there are many changes that
  blockchains can implement to become quantum
  resistant. Already, projects like the Quantum
  Resistant Ledger (QRL) have their implementation
  of a blockchain that will not be affected by the
  exponential increase in computational power of
  quantum computers.

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• QRL ensures quantum resistance by making sure
  that private keys are generated in a very
  complicated way that relies on hash-based
  cryptography compared to current public key
  cryptography. So far as the consensus algorithm
  of Bitcoin, Proof of Work is concerned, it could
  easily be upgraded using a hard fork that has
  been used several times in the past. Since
  quantum computers can make many hash functions
  obsolete, the underlying Blockchain of many
  tokens would have to change their architecture
  fundamentally.

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Blockchain Council Certifications

• You can check out our certifications, and kick
  start your career in the Blockchain space today.
• Certified Blockchain Expert
• Certified Blockchain Expertv2
• Certified Blockchain Developer
• Certified Smart Contract Developer
• Certified Solidity Developer
• Certified Ethereum Developer

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