A newly proposed "quantum blockchain" could lead to blockchain systems impervious from quantum-computer hacking, a new study finds.
This new quantum blockchain can be interpreted as influencing its own past, making it behave like a time machine, the researchers add.
A blockchain is a kind of database that holds records about the past, such as a history of financial or other transactions, that every node in the network can agree on and that does not require a centralized institution to maintain its ongoing accuracy. The most well-known application of blockchains is Bitcoin, but a diverse array of startup companies, corporate alliances, and research projects have explored other potential uses for the technology.
"It's expected that 10 percent of global GDP could be stored on blockchain technology by 2027," says lead author Del Rajan, a theoretical physicist at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.
However, blockchains might face trouble from another up-and-coming technology, quantum computers. Whereas classical computers switch transistors either on or off to symbolize data as ones and zeroes, quantum computers use quantum bits or qubits that, because of the surreal nature of quantum physics, can be in a state of superposition where they are both 1 and 0 simultaneously.
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