Quantum computing paragraph should be more detailed and with more respectable sources
thebtcguy opened this issue · 3 comments
Quantum computing is probably the only perceived threat by non-beginner bitcoin users and a possible obstacle to a bigger global investment exposure on this asset. There are tens of well founded companies that claim to be working on QC and to be on the right path to deliver, in a relatively short time frame, QCs that could be able to handle calculations that are not possible with standard computers. Since these companies attracted billions from several professional investors it is not likely that their claims are completely untruthful.
At least these topics should be addressed:
- More professional opinions by people involved in QC on which could be a realistic time frame for the QC to break ECDSA (somebody says 2years somebody says never) and perhaps SHA256
- More professional opinion on how secure is post quantum cryptography
- More developers stance on how the post quantum cryptography could be integrated into Bitcoin and a possible timeframe.
- What will happen with all the coins deposited on addresses that have shared the public key (eg. very old coins) and could be spent if ECDSA is broken.
A good suggestion and I'd be happy to add relevant articles if you come across them.
Bruce Schneier takes question on qunatum computing impact on discrete log public key cryptography. tldr: "not in our lifetime"
https://youtu.be/bjopJ-_vAUE?t=1927
more
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/09/quantum_computi_2.html
"Public-key encryption (used primarily for key exchange) and digital signatures are more complicated. Because they rely on hard mathematical problems like factoring, there are more potential tricks to reverse them. So you’ll see key lengths of 2,048 bits for RSA, and 384 bits for algorithms based on elliptic curves. Here again, though, the costs to reverse the algorithms with these key lengths are beyond the current reach of humankind."
Thank you @teambitcoin
The schneier video is nice but editorial-wise I'm including only long-form posts in this website.
The blog post OTOH is great and I'm adding it now.