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Are these Cryptocurrencies Quantum Secure? | QRL, Mochimo, IOTA, Cardano
There’s been a lot of chatter about quantum computing destroying bitcoin.
Quantum computers are really effective against Elliptic curve encryption, and RSA encryption. While RSA isn’t used as much in cryptocurrencies, Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm or ECDSA is the cryptographic algorithm used by Bitcoin to make sure that only the owner can spend their coin.
For bitcoin, one of the biggest issues is the fact that this public key is exposed when a transaction is made. And when the public key is exposed, there’s a possibility that a quantum computer could reverse the calculation and actually find the private key from the public key, given a large enough quantum computer. You use the private key to “sign” the transaction to say, yes, this is me, I approve this. If someone else has it, they can also make a transaction that you don’t approve.
And there are new cryptocurrencies coming out that are saying they are quantum safe, quantum resistant — which means stand up to known attacks by quantum computers.
The ones I’m going to cover here are some of the more popular ones, but also revolve around signature schemes, specifically, the rise of Winternitz One time Signature (W-OTS) and eXtended Merkle Signature Scheme (XMSS) .
