Thanks cnut237! I was thinking of summarising the thread and what we have discussed in the reserve post I made but I decided to just include useful quotes and links which I would like to hear more about and more differing opinions on if possible. I have moved this to Bitcoin development & technical discussion hopefully finding a few new people who can expand on the on going discussion and hopefully provide new useful information.
Defences using quantum computers.As Ive said a few times, Im more of a bumbling enthusiast than an expert, but exploiting quantum properties to defend against QC attack seems to me a very good idea. In theory properties such as
entanglement and the
uncertainty principle can offer an unbreakable defence. Again, people are busy researching this area. There are some quite astonishing ideas out there, such as
this one.
I have done some research in this particular field of quantum physics myself and had come across Rajan and Matt Visser proposed idea of implementing a blockchain which relied on transaction records being represented by pairs of entangled photons which would be ordered in a chronological way. Their idea is very smart and by preventing quantum computers from using data in the Blockchain by removing previous photons is a very unique solution to the problem. However I am a little concerned that this complex blockchain would be too hard for the public to grasp and usability could be compromised. The most important thing with Bitcoin is getting people trusting the software and investing in it with a solution as complex as this you would need a quantum computing degree to even grasp it which could result in the loss of faith from the public due to the complexity of the Blockchain. Currently the Blockchain is fairly easy to understand and can be explained in a concise matter but with a entangled photons based blockchain this would be lost.
This is one of my major concerns about Bitcoin being adopted by the masses. Its not the potential security risks because they will be combated with various different techniques. Its the problem of making Bitcoin too hard to understand and therefore losing the trust of the general user.