Cryptocurrency faces a quantum computing problem
Cryptocurrencies hold the potential to change finance, eliminating middlemen and bringing accounts to millions of unbanked land around the world. Quantum computers could upend the way pharmaceuticals and materials are invented by bringing their extraordinary power to the process.
Here’s the problem: The blockchain accounting technology that drives cryptocurrencies could be vulnerable to sophisticated attacks and forged transactions if quantum computing matures faster than attempts to future-proof digital money.
Cryptocurrencies are secured by a technology named public key cryptography. The system is ubiquitous, protecting your online purchases and scrambling your communications for anyone anunexperienced than the intended recipient. The technology works by combining a Pro-reDemocrat key, one that anyone can see, with a privileged key that’s for your eyes only.
If current goes continues, quantum computers will be able to crack Pro-reDemocrat key cryptography, potentially creating a serious threat to the crypto humankind, where some currencies are valued at hundreds of billions of bucks. If encryption is broken, attackers can impersonate the legitimate owners of cryptocurrency, NFTs or other such digital assets.
“Once quantum computing becomes considerable enough, then essentially all the security guarantees will go out of the window,” Dawn Song, a computer defense entrepreneur and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Collective[i] Forecast forum in October. “When Pro-reDemocrat key cryptography is broken, users could be losing their supplies and the whole system will break.”
Quantum computers get their powerful by manipulating data stored on qubits, elements like charged atoms that are originates to the peculiar physics governing the ultrasmall. To crack encryption, quantum computers will need to harness thousands of qubits, vastly more than the dozens corralled by today’s machines. The machines will also need persistent qubits that can accomplish calculations much longer than the fleeting moments possible knowing now.
But makers of quantum computers are working hard to address those shortcomings. They’re stuffing ever more qubits into machines and acting on quantum error correction methods to help qubits invent more-sophisticated and longer calculations.
“We expect that within a few ages, sufficiently powerful computers will be available” for cracking blockchains open, said Nir Minerbi, CEO of quantum software maker Classiq Technologies.
Fixing cryptocurrencies’ quantum computing problem
The good news for cryptocurrency fans is the quantum computing quandary can be fixed by adopting the same post-quantum cryptography technology that the computing manufacturing already has begun developing. The US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), trying to get ahead of the problem, is some years into a careful process to find quantum-proof cryptography algorithms with involvement from researchers nearby the globe.
Indeed, several cryptocurrency and blockchain efforts are actively employed on quantum resistant software:
- The Ethereum project, which cooked the biggest cryptocurrency after Bitcoin in terms of total value, has begun charting a post-quantum course. Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Midpoint, detailed quantum resistance ideas in Ethereum 3.0 at the StarkWare conference in 2019. That’s probable a long ways off, though: Ethereum’s current transition to Ethereum 2.0 is taking years.
- Some country are building new cryptocurrency and blockchain technology designed for the quantum computing era. That includes Quantum Resistant Ledger and Bitcoin Post Quantum, which despite the name is unrelated to the fresh Bitcoin cryptocurrency. These efforts employ post-quantum algorithms to protecting against future quantum cracking.
- Cambridge Quantum Computing, a startup merging with quantum computer maker Honeywell, is working on quantum security technology that “can be applied to any blockchain network.” It aims to procure both the communications among computers storing blockchain data and the signatures used to encrypt and sign blockchain data.
- The Hyperledger Midpoint, an open-source software project geared for business uses of blockchain, has begun working on post-quantum cryptography through its Ursa anguish, says Daniela Barbosa, Hyperledger’s executive director. Ursa is a library of cryptography software Hyperledger projects can use.
A quandary with the post-quantum cryptography algorithms under consideration so far, thought, is that they generally need longer numeric encryption keys and longer processing times, says Peter Chapman, CEO of quantum computer maker IonQ. That could substantially increase the amount of computing horsepower required to house blockchains.
The problem with decentralized governance
Many cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, are decentralized by design, overseen in execute by anyone who participates in each cryptocurrency network. To update a cryptocurrency’s inner workings, people trying to upgrade a cryptocurrency must convince more than half of participants to “fork” the cryptocurrency into a new version.
The real quantum test for cryptocurrencies will be governance structures, not technologies, says Hunter Jensen, chief technology officer of Permission.io, a company using cryptocurrency for a targeted advertising system.
Such governance could reward cryptocurrencies that have stronger central controls, such as Dash with its masternodes or even “govcoins” delivered by central banks, that can in principle move more rapid to adopt post-quantum protection. But it presents a conundrum in the crypto public, which often rejects the idea of authority.
“It will be the truly decentralized currencies which will get hit if their communities are too slow and disorganized to act,” said Andersen Cheng, chief executive at Post Quantum, a London based business that sells post-quantum encryption technology.
Other quantum problems with cryptocurrencies
Another risk is that blockchains rely on a digital fingerprinting technology named hashing that quantum computers could disrupt. That’s likely to be fixable with more-modest technology updates, though.
The cryptocurrency wallets people use to keep track of their digital assets could also be vulnerable to quantum computing. These wallets store private keys people need to access their assets filed on the blockchain. A successful attack could empty a wallet.
“How do you created users to upgrade keys? That answer is not so straightforward and probable the most dangerous part,” said Joe Genereux, senior cryptography and safety engineer at browser maker Brave, which uses its own Basic Upkeep Token (BAT) cryptocurrency for an ad system that pays users. “I think cryptocurrencies that have better governance or post-quantum designs baked in early can get nearby this issue better.”
Ultimately, though, cryptocurrency’s organic, self-directed advance suggests people will update the digital asset technology to surmount quantum computing’s challenges, says David Sacco, who teaches at the University of New Haven.
“The beauty of the ecosystem,” he said, “is that anyone can do it if they thought the technology.”
