Cryptocurrency is exiting and considered one of the most powerful spheres of technology. This is aided by the level of security embedded in their exchanges. They involve ‘unhackable’ keys and the underlying blockchain is invulnerable. QCs have the capability of hacking and cracking the encryptions built into cryptocurrency. The resulting effect would be an insurmountable catastrophe on crypto markets which can cause market bull run and damage the viability of the blockchain technology.

Measures taken by cryptographers to prevent hacking

Cryptographers have developed a Quantum Resistant Ledger (QRL) which is the first coin to be quantum proof. Cryptography, which is inherent in blockchain, makes the data contained in bitcoins immune or impossible to hack, edit and or tamper with. A conventional computer would take a millennium to even come close to breaking BC’s encryption. Even government supercomputers with the capacity of handling quadrillions of calculation per second cannot even come close.

How does QRL achieve this goal?

It employs a new type of hash based signature trees known as Extended Merkel Signature Scheme (XMSS) and provides users with multiple single use signatures by simply getting one public key that remains constant, but generates numerous multiple keys usable at once. Hence it evades threats posed by QCs by constantly generating new single use private keys. It has also built an ephemeral messaging layer (EML) on QRL blockchain. This allows for quantum proof file transfers, messaging, VOIP and many others. This technology can be adopted by governments, corporate and state actors to quantum proof their information and data.

QRL has been built in etherium blockchain and was launched on 26th June 2018 allowing traders and investors to exchange their ERC 20 tokens for new QRL token built on blockchain.

NSA announced its intentions to shift encryption of government and military data from current cryptographic schemes to new ones which are quantum proof. The most suitable proofing mechanism is based on mathematics of lattices, which has multidimensional repeating grids of points, uses arrow vectors and makes it difficult to determine points of intersection in lets say a 500 dimensional lattice. The Government Communication Headquarter (CGHQ) and Britains Electronic Surveillance Agency posted a paper calling into question the security of some of the most efficient lattice based system.

There is an ongoing feud between cryptoanalysts and cryptographers, a cat and mouse game between the two revolving around developing a sound system of quantum proofing. Susceptibility of the system has been caused by cryptographers trying to simplify the lattice grid while cryptoanalysts discover the vulnerability of the lattice system and creating resistant and safe ones. While cryptoanalysts are silent, cryptographers are busy eroding security foundations. The public key cryptography (RSA) proposes that data can be secured by a simple math problem which is easy to solve but byzantine to reverse, consisting of a multiplication of two large prime numbers to generate an integer. This integer is difficult to factorize into its constituent primes (the equivalent of a private key) while the integer or product being the public key only a person with the private key can decrypt the public key.

RSA prime number system and Diffie Hellman algorithm were ditched when Peter Shor of AT & T revealed the decrypting power of of QCs. While ordinary computers computational capabilities are directly proportionate to the number of bits, QCs with a high number of qubits incorporates an exponentially increased capability to handle and solve complex mathematical problems such as computing prime factors and breaking algorithms. The advent of QCs has prompted cryptographers to develop lattice system that it cannot hack. The lattice based system is like being in a 500 dimensional lattice where you begin at a point, jiggle the spartial coordinates and end at a near by point. It is hard to find the nearest lattice point in a vast dimensional lattice. Take the private keys to be the lattice point and the public keys to be an arbitrary location in space