China Breakthrough that Protects Blockchains from Quantum Attacks
China's Cloud could have Quantum Supremacy
They say the best offense is defense. China’s implementation of blockchain is more centralized and Cloud-based than the rest of the world it appears in 2022. China are among the leaders in quantum communications, networking and the quantum internet. It’s not surprising they have been thinking a lot about cybersecurity at the intersection of quantum.
According to the state-owned China News Service, the Chinese blockchain platform ChainMaker has been built with technology that can withstand assaults from both conventional and quantum computers. This has not been independently verified.
Developers say a digital signature algorithm further secures information transmission between financial institutions, official news agency reports. Also known as Chang’An Chain, it is China ’s first independent blockchain platform and was developed by a state-backed Beijing consortium.
You can read the original SCMP post here, or if it’s blocked there, here. In terms of cloud integration of blockchain, I have a pretty high confidence in Baidu and Alibaba. The Beijing Academy of Blockchain and Edge Computing designed the system, which was introduced in January of last year (2021). It is China's first autonomous blockchain platform and was created in collaboration with universities such as Tsinghua and Beihang, as well as IT heavyweights like Tencent and Baidu.
The Post-Quantum Secure Internet
A post-quantum digital signature algorithm has been integrated into the blockchain platform to keep it secure from attacks – even those by quantum computers that can potentially threaten the security of traditional communications, the report said.
According to Interesting Engineering or IE, In 1994, US mathematician Peter Shor discovered that a quantum computer might be used to calculate the prime factors of large numbers. This lit the spark for the inevitable decline of conventional secure communications that utilize encryption based on computational complexity.
In response to this, classic cryptographic techniques, dubbed "post-quantum cryptography", as well as a quantum key distribution scheme, have been designed to fight possible quantum computer assaults.
To this end, the president of quantum tech company QuantumCTek told state-run China Science Daily that developing solutions to prevent quantum assaults is critical, even if a full-fledged quantum computer may take another eight to ten years to build.
Blockchain with Chinese Characteristics
While blockchains are most widely utilized through peer-to-peer networks to verify decentralized data—generally for managing cryptocurrency, they are also used in China to verify contracts, health data, and other types of data.
China’s view of blockchain is less about profit and trading and more about security, scale, utility and convenience.
This in my opinion is a very different approach to Blockchain integration into the technology stack.
During the Beijing Winter Olympics earlier this year, ChainMaker said that its technology was utilized in carbon trading, supply chain financing, and food origin tracking.
It makes you wonder about China’s impressive neo-surveillance model of Capitalism that is more AI-native. According to the official Chinese broadcaster CCTV, the consortium said in June last year that it had installed a 96-core blockchain processor that makes signature verification 20 times quicker and smart contract processing 50 times faster on the network.
I actually like it that China takes common prosperity and technology regulation seriously. Since the U.S. is unable to do this it could in the end become a competitive advantage for China, who has a more collaborative approach to building startups and innovation at scale. China’s BAT companies are often on the bleeding edge of investing back into startups in intersecting sectors at a scale that’s a much higher percentage than the GAFMA of Silicon Valley that morbidly suppresses competition with their duopolies. Over time this movement means China can catch up to the West in terms of many industries.
Building a quantum secure communication network is an urgent matter. The denser the network, the better; and the denser it is, the more practical it become. Just as China approaches infrastructure differently it’s implementation of blockchain bears some watching.
What do you make of this news and ChainLink’s involvement?
When a Quantum computing reaches 1 million qubit we will have a better idea of the kind of cybersecurity that will need to be involved. I’m not sure current articles are very good or accurate at summarizing the future of its importance or how A.I. will evolve to counteract all defenses via Quantum computing.
Google often serves me Chinese state media on my search page, which sort of makes me wonder. It’s a bit far fetched than an algorithm today could protect us from the quantum computing attacks of tomorrow. But I found the topic pretty interesting. Between state propaganda, rumors on WeChat and Sina Weibo (新浪微博) it’s sometimes hard to tell what the truth is.
However China’s long-term view with regards to the use and development of technology, innovation, computing and artificial intelligence and its emphasis on producing more PhDs in the required specialized domains is considerable and fundamentally more agile for the future.