Will a quantum money that can support a long-term galactic civilization be designed before 2035?
11
78
250
2035
22%
chance

Similar to Isaac's unlisted question, but with slightly different criteria.

Such a cryptocurrency would need to include the following features:

  • The ability to spend a coin depends only on possession of some quantum "token".

  • Tokens must be publically verifiable

  • Anyone with a fault-tolerant quantum computer and a token can transfer the token to anyone with another quantum computer, as long as they can transfer quantum data

  • Starting with a certain amount of money, it is infeasible to double-spend or create more money.

  • Finalization of transactions in any location takes less than 10 minutes.

  • Based only on well-accepted post-quantum cryptographic assumptions at the time the design is released (recursive SNARKs and lattice-crypto are examples of things currently ok as long as they don't get broken, money-from-knots is not currently ok, but could become ok with stronger justification)

Get Ṁ200 play money
Sort by:

Does the finalization of transactions in any location in faster than 10 minutes mean it needs to incorporate FTL information transfer?

@ArunJohnson No. It's just that the transfer between parties has to take less than 10 minutes, and it can't be possible for double-spends to take place.

Is there a scalability requirement? Galactic level scale is tricky to plan for

@Ansel I sort of view the scalability as built-in - if a person can transfer a token without any external internet access, then the system by default scales to however many users it needs to.

More related questions