In IEEE Spectrum, Dina Genkina writes: "The race to transition online security protocols to ones that can’t be cracked by a quantum computer is already on. The algorithms that are commonly used today to protect data online—RSA and elliptic curve cryptography—are uncrackable by supercomputers, but a large enough quantum computer would make quick work of them. There are algorithms secure enough to be out of reach for both classical and future quantum machines, called post-quantum cryptography, but transitioning to these is a work in progress.
Late last month, the team at Google Quantum AI published a whitepaper that added significant urgency to this race. In it, the team showed that the size of a quantum computer that would pose a cryptographic threat is approximately 20 times smaller than previously thought...
...The whitepaper called out Algorand specifically for implementing post-quantum cryptography on their blockchain. We caught up with Algorand’s chief scientific officer and professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, Chris Peikert, to understand how this announcement is impacting cryptography, why cryptocurrencies are feeling the effects, and what the future might hold. Peikert’s early work on a particular type of algorithm known as lattice cryptography underlies most post-quantum security today."
Read the interview here
