The post-quantum era of blockchain: today’s solutions for the world of tomorrow

Despite the last year’s meteoric popularity growth of the blockchain-based projects and cryptocurrencies market rocketing, the industry is still far from the mainstream worldwide adoption.

The current existing technical solutions for a fast-developing crypto market show a lot of problems. One of them is the current state of scalability of the existing blockchains. There is definitely a growing need for the faster and better blockchain solutions. As we have already seen in the past with major cryptocurrencies, blockchain scalability has proven to be very problematic.

Anyway, the popularity of digital assets and exchanges is increasing significantly high these days, and no one can say what to expect in the nearest future. Recent problems among which are such issues as exchange hacks and tightening government regulation of many countries only do increase an overall uncertainty regarding the popularity of blockchain technologies at large as they create an obstacle on the way of the mainstream spread.

That being said, many users and crypto enthusiasts do not realize that there are more significant threats in the foreseeable future.

The phantom menace

Speaking about the blockchain benefits, which fuel its popularity, such things as decentralization and security come to mind first. The problem is that with the rise of quantum computing technologies at large a certain degree of threat also raises regarding the blockchain ledgers.

Recent advanced steps made by giants such as Google, Intel, D-Wave and several other research groups indicate that working models of computers with previously unimaginable processing power will finally be developed and presented not within decades, but in some rough 3–5 years.

So far, the most progress had already been made regarding the hardware development, but it does not mean that the quantum tech companies do not pay attention to the software market too.

The emergence of the quantum computing indeed poses a serious threat to the known forms of program security such as key cryptography which empowers the blockchain apps.

The Q-computing rising

Technically speaking, the modern cryptography uses a pair of keys to encrypt specific information — a public and a private one. The most advanced cryptography system link the public and private keys — the factor of a number is used here, and that is the product of two incredibly large prime numbers. The standard classic computer can test a trillion keys in a second, and it can take up to 785 million times longer than the roughly 14 billion years the universe has existed already so far due to the size of the prime numbers in question. Here lies the problem and here is the point where the quantum computers step in.

The vast increase in processing power can create yet unbelievable possibilities and computing options to generate a private key from the corresponding public key. In case it would be possible to implement, even the most reliable forms of traditional public key cryptography would be vulnerable.

Fact is, the quantum computing technologies rely on quantum physics and have much more potential power than any classic computer type. The blockchain is a public ledger of all Bitcoin transactions that have ever been executed, its public record is continuously growing with each Bitcoin transaction, and it is chronological.

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. Of course, the capacity to compute using qubits renders quantum computers many orders of magnitude faster than current existing computers. The qubits problem, however, is that they are so inherently unstable.

The present-day achievements

No doubt that a working prototype of a quantum computer could break today’s public key cryptography and the digital signatures used in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It is all in theory so far, of course. That would mean, in other words, that one could forge transactions and steal the digital currencies on any scale.

Still, speaking about the modern day, the existing quantum computers which capable of speedy number factoring are not present, but no doubt, the work is in progress big time by many top leading corporations. The future of public key cryptography is undoubtedly under threat, as the blockchain industry and Bitcoin itself pretty much, heavily relies on it. The vulnerability, in this case, is not a forecast, but a distant upcoming reality.

A spearhead of the countermeasures

It is worth mentioning that the specific countermeasures concepts had also been in development for a long time.

The question arises, therefore: if the blockchain security is impossible in quantum systems-powered future and whether the advent of quantum computing influence the overall blockchain technology spread and makes it outdated?

Top world cryptographers are working on quantum-resistant cryptography, and there are already blockchain projects aimed to implement this feature. The question arises here — what makes the actual “post-quantum” cryptography useful? When private keys generated from public keys in ways that are much more mathematically complex than traditional prime factorization. To be clear, quantum computing threatens all computer security systems that rely on public key cryptography, not just the blockchain. All security systems, including blockchain systems, need to consider post-quantum cryptography to maintain data security for their systems. No doubt, the easiest and most efficient way to deal with it would be to replace traditional systems with the blockchain systems that implement quantum-resistant cryptography.

Some projects had already come up with particular solutions. The upcoming project Cellframe, for example, represents one of the most advanced blockchain developments for the post-quantum era.

Cellframe is aimed to come up with long-term-needed solutions to many existing and accumulated problems such as scalability, security and transaction speed. It is a quantum resistant blockchain of the new generation, optimized for high load and merge of all the top modern features of existing blockchain technologies. One of the essential features is the variative Post-quantum algorithms, implemented to make Cellframe quantum resistant to survive the upcoming so-called “Quantum Apocalypse.”

Cellframe project concept is based on three main aspects: scalability, variability, and security.

The specific features include the ring signatures, variability in different encryption and wallet types, multichain & sharding support, enhanced speed, Smart Contracts and Open API for 3rd party coins and projects and so on.

Shaping the future of the blockchain indsutry with Cellframe

So, where do we aim while developing Cellframe? We are stepping on the edge of the current existing technologies to create the best possible solutions for tomorrow.

Cellframe will remain actual throughout many years after the release as it is open for further advancements and upgrades due to its unique structure — that will ensure the Cellframe long-time supremacy over the market in future. The project team is proud to create and present the product that is already ahead of its time, and we are aimed to maintain its progress constant.

The current existing market shows decidedly fewer competitors that utilize similar progressive ideas. Cellframe represents the best solutions of tomorrow for the better, safer and more advanced forthcoming technological future.

You can learn more about our exciting project in the Telegram channel and the official website.