On December 10, Google officially announced an important technology news:
Its latest quantum computer "Willow" has achieved two important achievements:
- Willow can significantly reduce errors by using more quantum bits (with 105 physical qubits), solving the quantum error correction challenge that has been under research for nearly 30 years.
- Willow can complete a standard benchmark calculation in less than 5 minutes, while the fastest supercomputer today would take 10^25 (10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) years to complete this calculation, which is longer than the age of the universe.
This is a major breakthrough for Google in quantum computing.
However, Google also frankly stated in the news that quantum computers that can be practically applied to commercial scenarios may not appear before 2030.
Quantum computing is also one of the most cutting-edge research fields in information technology.
In our encryption ecosystem, many readers have heard more or less about quantum computing, because it poses a major threat to the cornerstone of blockchain technology - encryption algorithms. More simply, quantum computers can theoretically crack the encryption algorithms used by blockchain technology.
Seeing Google's achievements in quantum computing, many people, including many traditional self-media on the internet, have started to claim:
Bitcoin is about to collapse.
There are two articles on the internet that have well answered this question. Of course, some of the data in them is worth discussing, but taken together, the core points of these two articles are still on the mark.
The links to the two articles are attached at the end of the text, and I have extracted two key points from them below.
1. From the perspective of computing power and commercialization, current quantum computers are still far from threatening encrypted assets
Willow quantum computer currently has 105 qubits. But Google's former senior product manager Kevin Rose pointed out that "the estimated number of qubits needed to crack the encryption of Bitcoin is about 13 million, in order to complete the decryption within 24 hours".
So from the perspective of computing power alone, the number of qubits required to crack the encryption algorithm of Bitcoin is more than 100,000 times that of Willow.
Furthermore, even if the computing power is reached, Google itself estimates that the commercialization of quantum computers is unlikely before 2030.
This breaks the claim that "Bitcoin is about to collapse" from both the perspectives of computing power and commercialization.
2. Encrypted assets have already taken measures against quantum attacks
Let's take Bitcoin as an example.
If we only use a receiving address once, it will greatly reduce the risk of being attacked. Many Bitcoin wallets have already adopted this method: using a receiving address only once.
In addition, using a segregated witness address to receive Bitcoin can also reduce the risk of quantum attacks.
Finally, the encryption algorithm of Bitcoin itself has been evolving, and in the future, new quantum-resistant algorithms can be introduced.
The Ethereum ecosystem has also been prepared in this regard, and Vitalik has proposed a hard fork of Ethereum to introduce quantum-resistant algorithms.
So in the encryption ecosystem, many projects have also taken early measures against quantum attacks.
Therefore, if we can objectively look at this issue, those of us who are deeply involved in the encryption ecosystem do not need to be too worried.
This topic is brought up for discussion every now and then, and each time it is a popular science lesson, and each time the popular science lesson will make more and more people understand the real situation.
So we should still focus more on the progress of the encryption ecosystem, and not be distracted by too many outside noises that do not understand the truth.
