Last Week in QRL: September 24th — 30th

Quantum supremacy coverage, development updates, and a call for cryptographers for grant(s) in threshold lattice cryptography.

There’s been a flurry of activity since NASA temporarily dropped a paper indicating of google reportedly achieving quantum supremacy.

From that we responded with a piece reasserting our position that it’s not a matter of if but when quantum computers pose a threat, and that blockchains should be either already prepared or be preparing for a post-quantum world.

This was a followup article to the previous one when IBM announced a commercial quantum computer earlier this year in January.

If you’d like to know more about google’s achievement specifically, the best source is a blog from Scott Aaronson, who does a great job at breaking it down understandably for a high-school level audience. The blog is aptly called “Scott’s Supreme Quantum Supremacy FAQ!”.

Some coverage

Needless to say, we’ve had some coverage, including a latest one where Coindesk and Adam Koltun connected in an article “What Google’s ‘Quantum Supremacy’ Means for the Future of Cryptocurrency”

Other mentions include

Development updates

Work continues to happen for the upcoming fork, (more on that in another blog). Outside of that there’s some small updates such as one to the wallet.

It was reported from discord user Strike Attack that the wallet seed can be snatched from eavesdropping (think security cameras). This was quickly patched by JP Lomas in 24 hours with the current functionality shown in the above animated image.

Call for cryptographers

As part of our Foundations research arm, we’re putting out a call for cryptographers for a grant in threshold lattice cryptography.

More details will be released on that shortly.