What Threats do Quantum Computers Pose to Crypto Mining?

A recently published academic paper outlined two key threats posed by quantum computing to crypto mining.

Quantum computers are machines that use the properties of quantum physics to store data and perform computations. This can be extremely advantageous for certain tasks where they could vastly outperform even our best supercomputers. In recent years, there have been growing fears that these quantum computers could eventually be directed at crunching crypto mining computations required to generate new blocks.

What is Crypto Mining?

The competitive process verifies and adds new transactions to the blockchain for a cryptocurrency that uses the proof-of-work (PoW) method. The miner that wins the competition is rewarded with some amount of the currency and/or transaction fees.

What is Quantum Computing?

Quantum computing is a type of computation that harnesses the collective properties of quantum states, such as superposition, interference, and entanglement, to perform calculations. The devices that perform quantum computations are known as quantum computers.

What threats do quantum computers pose to crypto mining?

A recently published academic paper in AVS Quantum Science titled, "The impact of hardware specifications on reaching quantum advantage in the fault-tolerant regime", outlined two key threats posed by quantum computing to crypto mining, specifically bitcoin (BTC) mining, and the wider ecosystem.

The threat of quantum computers to proof-of-work blockchains

The proof-of-work consensus mechanism refers to the special system certain blockchains employ to select honest participants to perform the important role of proposing new blocks of transaction data to be added to the blockchain. Because there is no single authority governing a blockchain, it must rely on an automated system coded into the protocol to filter out dishonest users who might attempt to corrupt the blockchain with invalid transactions.

Main problems facing quantum computing technology

While quantum computers are already a thing, the technology is still very much in its infancy.

IBM's quantum processor, dubbed "Eagle," is considered the world's most powerful quantum computing system to date – containing 127 qubits. A long way off from the estimated 1.9 billion qubits required to break ECDSA within 10 minutes.