Developing a new understanding of quantum computing. 2021.

This page is a journal of work in progress.

Quantum computing is a fundamental threat to NFTs and the blockchain.

For its security, blockchain makes extensive use of public key cryptography. (1) This cryptography is virtually impossible to break using classical computers. For example, to break a key of 3072 bits (the current key size used by OpenSSH), using the combined power of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world, would require roughly as much time as the age of the universe. (2)

But to break that key with a quantum computer might take just minutes.

“There are no accurate predictions on when a quantum computer large enough to break current public key cryptosystems will exist, but the closest expectations estimate the 2030 decade for that event.” (3)

When that comes to pass, will all NFTs will be rendered worthless?

The endless hype of techno-utopianism.

The personal computer. The internet and dot-com culture. The smartphone. Social media. VR and AR. AI and machine learning. NFTs and the blockchain. And now… quantum computing to be followed by quantum supremacy.

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” Walter Benjamin, “On the Concept of History”

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Can beauty and aesthetic experiences save us?