News that two teams of Chinese scientists have achieved quantum advantage — a technical term for when a computer can perform functions beyond that of a classical computer — may be the signal that we have truly entered a new era. While Google’s 54-qubit quantum processor, Sycamore, became the first widely known example of early-stage quantum computing, the latest news out of the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei is the best proof yet that we have crossed the information rubicon.
But despite many reasons to be excited by these developments, there are reasons to be concerned, too. While we might all eagerly await the day when we can predict traffic jams, consign animal testing to the history books, or pinpoint someone’s likelihood of getting cancer and then engineer a unique treatment — all in seconds — its tremendous power has a dark side.
David Chaum is one of the earliest blockchain researchers and a world-renowned cryptographer and privacy advocate. Known as “The Godfather of Privacy,” Dr. Chaum first proposed a solution for protecting metadata with mix-cascade networks in 1979. In 1982, his dissertation at the University of California, Berkeley became the first known proposal of a blockchain protocol. Dr. Chaum went on to develop eCash, the first digital currency and made numerous contributions to secure voting systems in the 1990s. Today, Dr. Chaum is the Founder of Elixxir, Praxxis and the xx network, which combines his decades of research and contributions in the field of cryptography and privacy to deliver state-of-the-art blockchain solutions.
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