Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly round-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency technology development. I'm Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk's Associate Editor for Features, Opinion, and Standards.
In this issue:
What Google's quantum computing chip means for Bitcoin Developer defection highlights Ethereum's growing Solana problem Ordinalsbot records largest ever file on Bitcoin blockchain Polygon proves Plonky3 The most influential technologists in cryptocurrencies in 2024, promoting the speed of their systems
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NEED FOR SPEED: Polygon Labs claims its latest proof system, Plonky3, is the fastest on the market. (Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin seems to agree with this.) Proof systems are at the core of zero-knowledge rollups and are a critical component for transactions that rely on cryptographic security. This is the main piece of technology that creates a proof that summarizes off-chain transactions and sends it back to the base blockchain, in this case Ethereum. “If zkVM is a car, you can think of the proof system as the engine, and Plonky3 is what makes it all work,” Polygon co-founder Brendan Farmer told CoinDesk's Margaux tells Nijkerk. The faster the proof is generated, the less computational time you have to pay. “If you improve speed, you improve cost,” Farmer said. “This makes ZK Rollup very competitive in terms of cost.” In January 2022, Polygon released an earlier proof system called Plonky2, making it the fastest system on the market. I claimed that there was. A new and improved version, Plonky3, was released in July with more flexibility.
In awe of the size of this young man: Bitcoin Inscription Project OrdinalsBot is the last file in a collection of 1,500 “pizza ninjas”, the largest file ever on the oldest and most valuable blockchain I cast something called. This is part of a phenomenon in the Bitcoin development community known as “4 megas,” which are files that take up an entire block on the network. They are called 4 megabytes (MB) because they are nearly 4 megabytes (MB) in size (the maximum size of each block of Bitcoin transactions). Regular collectors believe they have value because they are visible on the blockchain. Toby Lewis, co-founder of OrdinalsBot, said, “There's more than just bragging rights behind the desire to hold the largest file in Bitcoin.” “The four megas have been on the Bitcoin blockchain forever and already have significant market value.” Bitcoin’s inscription is enabled by the Ordinals protocol, similar to Ethereum’s non-fungible tokens (NFTs) It has become. This allows data to be “etched” into individual satoshis, or “sats” (the smallest unit of BTC, equivalent to 1/100 millionth of a full Bitcoin), each unique and potentially valuable. It becomes a thing. read more.
Jumping Ship: There is no doubt that Ethereum ranks near the top of the crypto market in terms of market capitalization. Beneath the surface, at the product, developer, and decision-making level, the original smart contract platform continues to come under attack from one of its closest competitors, Solana. Ethereum and its many tightly linked networks remain the most important, influential and largest platform for decentralized finance. However, its lead is starting to fade as many crypto newbies choose Solana for its speed and low fees. The move was further punctuated on Monday with the news that long-time Ethereum ecosystem developer Max Resnick is leaving his job at development studio ConsenSys to jump into Solana's orbit. “Solana has much more potential and potential energy,” Resnick said in an interview with CoinDesk. He explained that the decision was rooted in his career path, but noted that “frustration” with Ethereum's inability to adapt played a role in the move. Ethereum does not have a streamlined process for making quick changes. While some see this as a strength of decentralized networks, others, like Resnick, see it as an impediment to long-term success. read more
The Most Influential: This week, for the 10th time, CoinDesk named the people who defined the year in crypto: our Most Influential list. (This is the first edition from 2015.) Most Influential highlights individual accomplishments from the past year. People are chosen for their projects, ideas, leadership, personality, or popularity. The Top 10 Most Influential are the people we think have had the most influence or led the most important projects. Next, profile 40 more people who are slightly less influential. (Prominent figures in the crypto space, such as Vitalik Buterin, will naturally be the most influential each year. However, we choose not to feature the same names each time.) This year Some of the tech luminaries we featured in our series included Solana's Lily Liu and Optimism's Jin. Yang, Sreeram Kannan of EigenLayer, Robin Linus of BitVM, Sergio Lerner of Rootstock, Steve Yun of TON, IIlia Polosukhin of NEAR, and Greg Osuri of Akash Network. The secret identities of the founders of Bitcoin's Taproot Wizards… and, of course, Satoshi Nakamoto, are still the talk of parlor games all these years later. (Writing that last article was truly cathartic for me.) Find all profiles here.
What does Google's quantum computing chip mean for Bitcoin?
Google's new quantum computing chip could mean the end of Bitcoin (BTC).
The Internet giant announced on Monday that Willow, a quantum supercomputer that can perform certain computational tasks in just five minutes that would take a traditional supercomputer an astronomical amount of time, specifically 10 Cecilian years (or 24 Cecilian years). That's how some people felt when it was announced. zero, one trillion).
10 billion. Such a period of time is longer than the 13.8 billion years of existence of the entire universe.
The superficial theory is that with such powerful computers, passwords are no longer secure, encrypted messages can be intercepted, nuclear weapons codes can be discovered, and almost everything can be hacked by brute-force combinations of numbers and letters. It could mean that it can be unlocked.
But it's not all doom and gloom just yet.
While quantum computing certainly poses a significant threat to current security systems, it is not the master key to the universe, at least for now. And there is no immediate threat to Bitcoin either.
Quantum computing leverages the principles of quantum mechanics and uses quantum bits, or qubits, instead of traditional bits. Unlike bits, which represent either 0 or 1, qubits can represent both 0 and 1 at the same time due to quantum phenomena such as superposition and entanglement. This allows quantum computers to perform multiple calculations simultaneously, potentially solving problems that classical computers cannot currently solve. Willow uses 105 qubits and shows that the error decreases exponentially as the number of qubits increases. This is an important step toward building practical large-scale quantum computers, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said.
Bitcoin uses algorithms such as SHA-256 for mining and ECDSA for signatures, which could make it vulnerable to quantum decryption. And in short, quantum computers, even advanced computers like Google's Willow, can use widely used technologies such as RSA, ECC (used in Bitcoin transactions), or AES (used in security protection). This means that they do not have the scale or error correction capabilities necessary to instantly break the existing encryption methods. data).
Once a quantum computer like Willow reaches a scale where it can easily factor large numbers, it could break these encryption schemes, compromising the security of wallets and the integrity of transactions. This will require quantum computers with millions or even billions of “qubits” with extremely low error rates, far beyond current technology.
“Google claims to have demonstrated 'subthreshold' error correction capabilities with its latest quantum chips,” Chris Osborne, founder of Solana ecosystem project Dialect, wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter). said. “'Below the threshold' means that physical qubits (noisy, basically useless, boring qubits) are replaced by logical qubits (multiple qubits that correct errors and can actually perform real computations). '', he added.
“It takes about 5,000 logical qubits to run Scholl's algorithm and break the encryption. In other words, it takes millions of physical qubits to break the encryption,” Osborn said. “The current Google chip has 105 physical qubits.”
Until then, cryptocurrencies (and other fields) have time to develop quantum-proof algorithms.
Click here for the full article by COINDESK's SHAURYA MALWA
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December 4-5: India Blockchain Week, Bangalore 5-6: Emergence, Prague December. 9-12: Abu Dhabi Financial Week December. 11-12: AI Summit New York City December 11-14: Taipei Blockchain Week January 9-12, 2025: CES, Las Vegas January. 15-19: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland 21-25 January: WAGMI Conference, Miami. 24-25: Bitcoin Adoption, Cape Town, South Africa. 30-31: PLAN B Forum, San Salvador, El Salvador. February. 1-6: Satoshi Roundtable, Dubai, February 19-20, 2025: Consensus Hong Kong, Hong Kong. 23-24: NFT Paris February 23-March 2: ETHD Denver May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto. March 18-19: Digital Asset Summit, London May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas.