I'd like for the members of this sub to please steelman the case for me that quantum computing won't be a huge problem for crypto. I'm legitimately curious and would love to hear your takes!
My current understanding (which again, may well be wrong, I'm here to learn!) is that when quantum computing becomes more feasible at scale, it will break most cryptography. This is a huge problem for anyone which uses cryptography, including banks, secure messaging, etc. All will need to update their cryptography to be secure. But it seems like a particularly big problem for crypto because decentralized networks are already more limited in terms of potential throughput. As signatures become bigger post-quantum, this will limit throughput even more.
I also know some people argue that quantum is a long way off, but that doesn't seem correct to me. Deloitte estimates that many crypto transactions are already vulnerable, and quantum computing is advancing at a rate much faster than Moore's Law.
Again, I'm here to learn, please be nice 🙂
Will Quantum Spell the End of Crypto?
byu/waitbutwhycc inCryptoTechnology
Posted by waitbutwhycc
2 Comments
It’s not a tech problem, there are already NIST recommendations for the cryptography needed to make most networks quantum proof it’s mainly digital signature schemes and it’s all out there. The real challenge is the consensus to implement it, like for Bitcoin with no governance its definitely complicated and will take time.
But some other lightweight verification based network with the means to upgrade and governance to decide efficiently should do just fine.
There are quantum resistance cryptography functions.
The bigger issue is that wallets will need to manually upgrade at some point meaning anyone who died or lost a wallet will eventually have their wallets cracked, this includes Satoshi’s wallet which has roughly 5% of all bitcoin.