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Willow enables Qubits to cut error rate in half
Are there qubits of sufficient height to break crypto encryptions?
Crypto market shaken by quantum apocalypse fears
Google’s Quantum AI team has announced the company has released its quantum computing chip “Willow” that can solve computational problems in minutes, sparking speculation about a possible cryptocurrency crack.
Willow can solve computational problems that previously took 10 septillion years to solve by supercomputers in 5 minutes.
Willow performs calculations at mind-boggling speeds and fixes errors exponentially faster, Quantum AI team leader Hartmut Neven said in a blog post on Sunday, December 9.
"This mind-boggling number far exceeds the known time scales in physics and the age of the universe," Neven said.
He also explained that the willow tree "provides support for the idea that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, consistent with the idea that we live in a multiverse, a prediction first made by David Deutsch."
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Willow enables Qubits to cut error rate in half
Neven underlined that Google's Quantum AI team has achieved a significant success by exponentially reducing errors through qubits, or quantum bits, one of the most important challenges in the field of quantum error correction that experts have been pursuing for 30 years.
"Using our latest advances in quantum error correction, we were able to halve the error rate. In other words, we achieved an exponential reduction in the error rate," Neven said.
"This historic achievement is known in the field as 'subthreshold'; that is, being able to reduce errors while increasing the number of qubits," Neven added.
This quantum bit, or qubit, is an essential unit of information for quantum computing because it allows you to have higher computational power. However, adding more qubits also increases the risk of errors, which makes the computation unreliable and gives wrong results. This makes it difficult to scale for large-scale practical use.
However, Willow has solved this problem by reducing the error rate, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced this in a post on social media platform X. Pichai said Willow is an important step in Google's journey to build a "useful quantum computer" with practical applications in drug discovery, fusion energy and battery design.
Google has published results in a paper published in the journal Nature showing that "the more qubits we use in Willow, the more we can reduce errors and the more quantum the system becomes."
Google engineers halved the error rate when they increased the size of a physical qubit array from 3x3 coded qubits to 5x5 and then to 7x7.
With this technology, the tech giant aims to produce a computer that can perform complex error-correcting calculations. Google has reached 2 of the 6 milestones on its Quantum computing roadmap so far.
Are there qubits of sufficient height to break crypto encryptions?
Advances in quantum computing have long been a powerful turning point for the crypto industry, as these computers can crack passwords and expose user funds to hackers who can quickly access large amounts of digital assets.
According to former Google product manager Kevin Rose, Willow is not that big of a threat to cryptocurrencies because it would take at least 13 million qubits in 24 hours to compromise Bitcoin encryption, and that has yet to be achieved.
The Willow chip has just 105 qubits.
Kevin Rose revealed this in a series of tweets. In his tweet he said:
“Q: Can Google's Willow break Bitcoin?
Estimates suggest that for Bitcoin’s encryption to be compromised, a quantum computer with around 13 million qubits would be required to achieve decryption within a 24-hour period.
In comparison, Google’s Willow chip is a significant advancement, but it only has 105 qubits. We still have a long way to go… Still, it’s a significant leap forward in quantum computing. 👏”
But David Marcus, CEO of payment platform Lightspark, warns not to undermine this development, saying it is time to move to "post-quantum cryptography and encryption."
Meanwhile, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has proposed ways to reduce quantum computing risks for cryptos like ETH. According to his March tweet, a hard fork could overturn the issue.
The way out is to include hard forks of the blockchain and have crypto users download new wallet software for security. However, he warned that a few users may lose funds.
Crypto market shaken by quantum apocalypse fears
The news sent waves through the cryptocurrency market, with global market value falling 4.6% to $3.46 trillion, while trading volumes surged 100% as investors fretted about a quantum apocalypse.
Twitter reacted by predicting that the cryptocurrency market would be wiped out by millions of people due to this new quantum computing development.
Geiger Capital tweeted that Bitcoin was dead, adding, "It's fun while it lasts. And so are all your passwords."
However, if quantum computers are able to crack passwords in the near future, the crypto industry is likely to shift towards quantum-safe algorithms.
Glenn Rachlin, GTM at Web3 security firm Blockaid, explained this by saying that Bitcoin uses two types of encryption. ECDSA 256 encryption is vulnerable to Shor’s algorithm, while others like RSA convert large composite numbers into prime numbers. Shor’s algorithm tends to factor primes at a higher rate than classical algorithms, weakening the security of the systems.
"It would take over 1,000,000 qubits to break that," Rachlin said, "and Willow's 105 isn't even close to that."
The second encryption, SHA-256, is even harder to break and requires millions of physical qubits.
“Bitcoin’s cryptography remains SAFU [Secure Asset Fund for Users] for now,” Rachlin added.
Meanwhile, Steven Rupp, founder of Block9 and Elev8 Digital Services, cited a Grok reply to dispel the rumors. Rupp noted that Willow “is currently unable to break Bitcoin’s hash due to limitations in the number of qubits, error correction, and computational difficulty of the problem.” The risk quantum computing poses to Bitcoin’s cryptography is acknowledged, but with current technology, it remains a theoretical concern rather than a practical one.
The crypto world is also advancing encryption standards, as seen earlier this year when the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology finalized three post-quantum encryption standards that are “designed to withstand cyberattacks from quantum computing.” Many cryptosecurity companies are developing technology to counter this threat.