A new face for Proof of Work – Since many years, Bitcoin remains at the heart of debates, often sterile, around its energy consumption. Faced with this situation, researchers are proposing an improvement in PoW using quantum computing techniques.
Researchers envision quantum PoW on Bitcoin
THE Bitcoin Proof of Work is often singled out for its high energy consumption. If the latter is not the cause of an ecological cataclysm, as some people like to claim, it is nonetheless very high.
On May 31, a team from Australian and American universities published an exciting preliminary research paper.
In this article, the researchers propose a new PoW model to ensure the consensus of blockchains such as Bitcoin. baptized “Proof-of-work consensus by quantum sampling”this new model relies on quantum computing techniques to validate the consensus.
Researchers claim that this system saves considerable time compared to current miners.
In addition, their method based on boson sampling offers a more energy efficient alternative. At least, when implemented on quantum hardware.
“While conventional PoW systems such as Bitcoin’s are notoriously energy inefficient, our boson sampling-based PoW system offers a much more energy efficient alternative when implemented on quantum material. »
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Quantum miners: the solution to Bitcoin’s problems?
According to the researchers, boson sampling could be a solution to reduce environmental impact of the PoW.
To do this, miners would have to trade their miners for a new kind of quantum machines. Thus, according to the researchers, the classic miners would not make the weight.
Even if miners were to evolve to where supercomputers are, it wouldn’t bring any improvement.
Indeed, the strength of supercomputers lies in their ability to perform precalculations when they frequently encounter the same mathematical problems. Unfortunately, this characteristic is of little interest in the field of mining.
In effect, mining is a “stepless” problem. Therefore, no matter how many times a proof of work is solved, it is impossible to use the data from the previous proofs to process the next one.
According to the researchers, quantum computers would offer a better alternative. This is despite development challenges and the high cost of construction and maintenance.
Nevertheless, the usual miners still seem to have a bright future ahead of them. In effect, these are only the results of a preliminary study. Thus, the large-scale commercialization and use of quantum miners is yet to come.
Last February, other researchers looked at Bitcoin consumption. The latter had proposed an alternative to Proof of Work, called Proof of Reputation. Nevertheless, whether it is the quantum Proof of Work or the Proof of Reputation, the Bitcoin community still has to accept such a radical modification of its consensus mechanism.
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