Over the past several years, the fears of post-quantum computing breaking all cryptography around private keys have grown from niche concerns to a broad concern. Hedge funds have been dumping bitcoin. Big global banks have been testing or even building blockchain-based models that bake in quantum-safe algorithms. Or at least, what they hope are quantum-safe algorithms.
Beyond the scare stories of “Q-Day” we also need to understand the impact that building for quantum resistance.
Although bitcoin is an obvious target, the same cryptography underpins many aspects of conventional digital banking, as well as the blockchains being used for stablecoins and tokenization projects. All of these projects face more than just a “make it safe” requirement. The making it safe changes what the blockchain can achieve. Anything requiring fast throughput – from digitally onboarding customers to payments – may need to be rethought.
That’s the most jarring conclusion from this discussion with Duncan Wong, a technologist and entrepreneur who has been early in both enterprise blockchain projects, and in studying the impact of quantum computing on security. Duncan began his career in academia and then in cybersecurity at ASTRI, a Hong Kong government-backed agency. As the founder of CryptoBLK, he participated in early consortia for restructuring trade finance around distributed-ledger technology. In early 2022 he co-founded Abelian, a blockchain ecosystem designed around privacy and quantum resistance.
Timecodes
0:00 - Duncan Wong, Abelian, and his ‘a-ha’ moment pivoting from enterprise blockchain to post-quantum computing safety
5:25 - What do banks get about PQC and what are they missing?
8:04 - What do we do about data already stolen from existing blockchain systems?
4:16 - What about stablecoins?
16:20 - Lessons from consortia experiences in early enterprise blockchain
18:06 - With PQC solutions so computationally heavy, what does that mean for performance, scale, and privacy?
23:43 - What happens to assets and liquidity on Q-Day?
28:00 - Defining “success” for PQC
28:52 - Abelian’s crypto-token and commercial challenges for PCQ digital assets
