Are Quantum Miners the Future of Bitcoin?

Abstract and I. Introduction

A. Quantum Bitcoin Mining

B. Our Contribution

C. Comparison with Related Works

D. Conventions

II. Background

A. Bitcoin Basics

B. Bitcoin Security

C. Grover’s Search Algorithm

D. Quantum Attacks

III. Approach

A. Algorithm

B. Markov Chain

C. Assumptions and Approximations

IV. Results

A. Probability of Success

B. Performance Measures

C. Example Application

V. Discussion, Acknowledgments, and References

It is unlikely that in the near future a quantum computer could pose a security risk solely through dominating the Bitcoin network’s computational power. However, security risks arise in a network with many quantum miners even when no single miner dominates. Our goal is to evaluate the amenability of quantum computing to Bitcoin mining to determine conditions for a quantum computer to outperform a classical computer at mining.

\ We consider a model in which there is a single quantum miner, and all other miners are classical. This model aligns with our aim because the threshold for useful quantum mining will be crossed if a single quantum computer becomes advantageous against the current network of all classical miners. We assume that the quantum miner’s procedure is to repeat the process of applying K Grover iterations and measuring, where K is some fixed natural number.

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:::info Authors:

(1) Robert R. Nerem, Institute for Quantum Science and Technology, University of Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada ([email protected]);

(2) Daya R. Gaur, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Lethbridge, Alberta T1K 3M4, Canada.

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:::info This paper is available on arxiv under CC BY 4.0 DEED license.

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