Two recent innovations—quantum computing and blockchain technology—have had a profound impact on their respective fields. Several problems with traditional financial systems, such as high transaction costs, lengthy processing times, and a lack of transparency, have been addressed by blockchain technology. While supercomputers and classical computers are unable to solve complex problems quickly enough, quantum computing was developed to address these issues. The creation of the quantum blockchain resulted from the combination of these amazing technologies. In this article, I aim to explore the advancements in quantum blockchain technology and provide a short overview of its benefits over traditional blockchain technology.
Blockchain Technology
It is becoming increasingly evident that blockchain technology has the potential to be an extremely disruptive technology, with the ability to completely transform society and its institutions on an economic, political, humanitarian, and legal level. Blockchain is a new way to use computer technologies, including encryption algorithms, distributed data storage, point-to-point transmission, and consensus mechanisms. In essence, Bitcoin’s underlying technology is a decentralized database. Every blockchain node stores a copy of the blockchain database, in contrast to widely distributed general storage. Blockchain has many applications in the fields of digital currency, information security, and smart contracts because of its decentralization, openness, and immutability of the data it stores. Software engineering, distributive computing, cryptography, and economic game theory are multidisciplinary fields that came together to create the innovative field of blockchain technology. As seen in Figure 1, blockchains function at the nexus of these domains, which facilitate the establishment of a global decentralized network of peers with financial incentives for these peers to behave honorably within the network, a foundation for a secure and scalable software infrastructure, and a basis for the protection of digital assets.
Three categories—Blockchain 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0—have been established to facilitate the organization and understanding of the various types of current and future activities within the blockchain revolution.
Blockchain 1.0 refers to currency, or the use of cryptocurrencies in cash-related applications like digital payment systems, remittance services, and currency transfers. Beyond simple cash transactions, Blockchain 2.0 encompasses contracts and a wide range of economic, market, and financial applications such as stocks, bonds, futures, loans, mortgages, titles, smart property, and smart contracts. Blockchain 3.0 refers to applications of blockchain technology that go beyond markets, money, and finance, especially in the fields of government, health, science, literacy, and the arts.
Key Features of Blockchain Technology
Hash Algorithm
This algorithm converts arbitrary-length input values into binary values with predetermined lengths. The term “hash value” refers to this binary value, which is used to confirm the accuracy of the data. The hash algorithm is used in the well-known Proof-of-Work algorithm. The blockchain block contains the hash value of the data. Additionally, hashing the required data and the private key produces the signature that is frequently used in blockchains.
Proof-of-Work
Simply put, Proof-of-Work (POW) is evidence that you have completed a specific amount of work. Any node in a blockchain system must solve the POW puzzle within the blockchain network in order to create a new block and publish it to the blockchain. An NP-hard problem is the POW puzzle. Nodes that compute and solve the POW puzzle are frequently rewarded with cryptocurrency. A crucial resource for miners is the difficulty value in the POW, which establishes the number of hash operations required to generate a valid block. The difficulty level can be dynamically changed during the mining process based on the total processing power of the blockchain network.
Timestamp
To demonstrate that the transaction took place at this precise moment, the blockchain system uses the timestamp. As a result, the currency involved in the transaction has a new owner, and the prior owner is no longer able to use it. Furthermore, every block is additionally stamped with an accurate timestamp to create an accurate linked list arranged chronologically.
Blockchain Structure
The blockchain is made up of several data blocks with well-organized records (transactions). Every block has a timestamp, the previous block’s hash value, and the content’s hash value. Each block on the blockchain is connected by its hash value. Every block is generated in chronological order, one after the other. The block is almost impossible to change once it has been verified as valid. Fig. 2 displays the schematic of the traditional blockchain.
Blockchain Network
Nakamoto outlined the procedures for maintaining the blockchain network:
Step 1: All network nodes receive a broadcast of new transactions.
Step 2: Every node builds a block of fresh transactions.
Step 3: The POW algorithm for each block is executed by each node.
Step 4: A node broadcasts the block to all other nodes after solving the POW puzzle.
Step 5: Only when every transaction in the block is legitimate and unused will other nodes accept it.
Step 6: Nodes use the hash of the accepted block as the previous hash to create the next block in the chain, indicating their acceptance of the block.
Figure 1: The schematic of the classical blockchain (“txn” stands for “transaction”).
Quantum Computing
There are fundamental differences between classical and quantum computing. Binary, or using bits in one of two states (0 or 1), is how traditional computing operates.
On the other hand, quantum bits, or qubits, are capable of existing in several states at once. The quantity of data that the system can analyze is increased exponentially by this duality. Large volumes of data can be analyzed far more quickly by quantum computers than by current systems.
Scientists and engineers use supercomputers to solve challenging problems. These are enormous, traditional computers that can perform complex calculations and have sophisticated artificial intelligence. They frequently have thousands of traditional CPU and GPU cores. Even supercomputers, though, are binary code-based devices dependent on transistor technology from the 20th century. They find it difficult to resolve some types of issues.
If a supercomputer is unable to solve a problem, it is likely because the large, classical machine was given an extremely complex problem to solve. Complexity is a common cause of failure for traditional computers.
Problems with numerous variables interacting in intricate ways are referred to as complex problems. Because there are so many distinct electrons interacting with one another, modeling the behavior of individual atoms in a molecule is a challenging task. Complicated issues include figuring out subtle fraud patterns in financial transactions or discovering new physics in a supercollider. There are some difficult issues that we are unable to resolve at any scale using traditional computers. By building multidimensional computational spaces, quantum algorithms tackle complex problems in a novel way. This proves to be a far more effective method for resolving intricate issues, such as chemical simulations.
Quantum Blockchain Construction
Before exploring the concept of quantum blockchain construction, it is significant to define entanglement in time. When tiny particles that have never coexisted, like photons, can become entangled, the entanglement in time happens. The inseparability (entanglement) of quantum systems, like photons, forms the concept of a chain, and the blockchain is represented by the GHZ (Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger) state of the photons that have never coexisted.
A string of two bits is used to represent the data in the classical block in the conceptual design of this quantum blockchain. Each block record, let’s say r1 and r2, is transformed during the encoding process into a temporal Bell state produced at a particular time, like t=0.
Time stamps can be created in the blockchain by using the superscript in kets, which shows the moment at which photons are absorbed. Specifically, a block’s initial photon is instantly absorbed.
The system encodes records into a temporal Bell state at the time they are generated. After that, these photons are produced and absorbed at the appropriate times. An instance of one of these blocks would be:
An entanglement in time must be used to connect the bit strings of the bell state in chronological order in order to realize the design of the quantum blockchain. A fusion process is used to establish this link.
Recursively, temporal Bell states are projected into a temporal GHZ state that is growing. The following represents the quantum blockchain’s state at t = nτ (beginning at t = 0):
In this case, superscripts stand for the time stamps, and subscripts represent the concatenated string of all the blocks. Let’s now examine the first two blocks ꘡ẞ00 〉 0, τ and ꘡ẞ10 〉 τ, 2τ as an illustration of dynamic linking.
Blockchain ꘡GHZ0010 〉 0,τ,τ,2τ is what the system will produce. The third block is then concatenated to yield ꘡GHZ001011 〉 0,τ,τ,2τ,2τ,3τ. The process of decoding allows for the extraction of the classical information, r1 r2….r2n from the state (3).
Advantages of Quantum Blockchain Over Traditional Blockchain
Security
It is necessary to guarantee the security of the quantum blockchain. Quantum secure direct communication, or quantum key distribution (QKD), is a means of ensuring the security of the communication between nodes. Thus, the properties of quantum physics ensure the network’s authentication.
Furthermore, in a classical blockchain, the digital signature can be used to confirm that the owner actually owns the Bitcoin. However, in the face of attacks by quantum computers, the traditional encryption algorithms used in digital signatures, like RSA, may become dangerous. The quantum blockchain’s quantum digital signature scheme can be used to address this issue. Consequently, quantum security is present in the quantum blockchain. Quantum computer attacks may not even affect the quantum blockchain.
Efficiency
The blockchain with quantum technology also has the characteristics of fast transaction processing speed. For example, a proposed model was tested using ten virtual nodes, each equipped with an Intel Core i3 6100 CPU clocked at 3.7 GHz, 8 GB of RAM, and 1 TB of storage, all running on the same system. The system was exposed to different transaction loads in order to evaluate its performance. To mimic actual usage scenarios, the transactions were generated at random. The number of transactions the system could process in a second and the time it took for a transaction to be confirmed were used to gauge its performance.
The performance analysis’s findings demonstrated that the suggested model can process up to 1000 transactions per second without materially affecting system performance. Compared to conventional centralized exchange platforms, which are usually limited to processing a few hundred transactions per second, this is a major improvement.
Conclusion
With its foundations in quantum information theory and quantum computation, quantum blockchain can be conceptualized as a distributed, encrypted, and decentralized database. No malicious person will be able to alter data once it has been stored in the quantum blockchain. In terms of security and efficiency, the quantum blockchain outperforms the conventional blockchain.
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