Quantum advantage on proof of work
Quantum advantage on proof of work
复制标题
工作量证明的量子优势
作者：
Bard D
工作证明(PoW)是大多数主要区块链加密货币背后的基础技术。此前有人指出，在比特币的背景下，量子设备在执行POW方面提供了计算优势。在这里，我们假设这种量子优势不仅扩展到所有现有的POW机制，而且也扩展到任何可能的POW机制。这对基于量子的攻击整个区块链的完整性，以及将量子计算更合法地用于挖掘比特币和其他加密货币的目的都产生了强烈的后果。对于第一种情况，我们估计这些量子攻击何时变得可行，针对各种加密货币，并讨论此类攻击的影响。对于后者，我们推导了一个精确的公式来计算转向基于量子的加密货币矿商的经济激励。使用这个公式，我们分析了几个测试场景，并得出结论，投资于用于加密货币挖掘的量子硬件具有巨大回报的潜力。
Proof-of-Work (PoW) is a fundamental underlying technology behind most major blockchain cryptocurrencies. It has been previously pointed out that quantum devices provide a computational advantage in performing PoW in the context of Bitcoin. Here we make the case that this quantum advantage extends not only to all existing PoW mechanisms, but to any possible PoW as well. This has strong consequences regarding both quantum-based attacks on the integrity of the entirety of the blockchain, as well as more legitimate uses of quantum computation for the purpose of mining Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. For the first case, we estimate when these quantum attacks will become feasible, for various cryptocurrencies, and discuss the impact of such attacks. For the latter, we derive a precise formula to calculate the economic incentive for switching to quantum-based cryptocurrency miners. Using this formula, we analyze several test scenarios, and conclude that investing in quantum hardware for cryptocurrency mining has the potential to pay off immensely.