A team of researchers from universities in Australia and the United States, working in collaboration with quantum technology company BTQ, recently published research proposing a novel proof-of-work (PoW) scheme for blockchain consensus that relies on quantum computing techniques to validate consensus.
Our new paper on using NISQ-era quantum sampling problems in proof-of-work blockchain consensus algorithms. In collaboration with @BTQ_Tech.https://t.co/MKAB2czqSk
— Peter Rohde (@drpeterrohde) June 1, 2023
Dubbed “Proof-of-work consensus by quantum sampling,” the preprint research paper details a system that the authors claim “provides dramatic speedup and energy savings relative to computation by classical hardware.”
According to the researchers, current algorithms for solving PoW consensus puzzles are slow and require a significant amount of computation resources to process:
“Whereas classical PoW schemes such as Bitcoin’s are notoriously energy inefficient, our boson sampling-based PoW scheme offers a far more energy efficient alternative when implemented on quantum hardware.”
According to the paper, the quantum advantage provided by this scheme would also increase the difficulty of mining, thus making it possible to “maintain consistent block mining time” as the number of miners increases, further incentivizing continuing…
