Scientists Propose New Quantum Proof of Work Consensus for Blockchain

Researchers from universities in the United States and Australia which have been collaborating in working with quantum technology firm BTQ, have published a new research paper which proposes a new proof-of-work (PoW) scheme for blockchain consensus which utilizes quantum computing techniques.

Named “Proof-of-work consensus by quantum sampling,” the detailed paper outlines a system which the authors claim to “provides dramatic speedup and energy savings relative to computation by classical hardware.” As claimed by the researchers, the current algorithms put in place for solving PoW consensus puzzles are slow, and require a lot of computing power and 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 published paper, the quantum benefit provided by this method would increase mining difficulty and will hence make it possible to “maintain consistent block mining time” as the number of individual miners increase, which is expected to incentives the continuous participation of “quantum miners”.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/scientists-propose-quantum-proof-of-work-consensus-for-blockchain

https://cointelegraph.com/explained/what-is-quantum-cloud-computing-and-how-does-it-work

https://twitter.com/drpeterrohde/status/1664119093887377408

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2305.19865.pdf