Building a Quantum-Safe Blockchain Today

Public-key cryptography is used to establish a distributed consensus of trust, which is essential for financial Blockchain solutions. While the chain itself is relatively secure, the “wallets” at the endpoints have already been demonstrated to be “hackable,” and quantum computing techniques will further expose the network to fraudsters and criminals.

In the near to medium future, emerging quantum computers aimed at conventional algorithms could disrupt existing digital security standards employing what is known as a storage attack. Storage attacks entail a hostile actor stealing from vulnerable blockchain addresses, such as ones in which the public key of the wallet is displayed on the public ledger.

Solana incident highlights blockchain vulnerabilities

Examining the impact of a recent incident affecting Solana, an increasingly popular blockchain, noted for its quick transactions, reveals the scope of the threat. During this security compromise, Solana users reported that cash was stolen from “hot” wallets connected to the internet. The loss is projected at approximately $8 million.

This hack only affected “hot” wallets, which are always linked to the internet and allow users to store and send tokens effortlessly. The nature of the breach is unknown; however industry professionals have noted that the transactions were correctly signed, indicating that the vulnerability could be a “supply chain attack” that compromised the private keys of users.

Quantum-safe wallets as a mitigation

The solution to the blockchain wallet vulnerabilities problem is to create quantum-safe crypto wallets secured by post-quantum cryptography (PQC) algorithm approved by NIST. On July 27, 2022, 01 Communique announced a Proof-of-Concept (“PoC”) for a quantum-safe blockchain which supports smart contracts while retaining ultra-fast throughput. The […]
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