Quantum Proof of Work with Parametrized Quantum Circuits

TL;DR

This paper proposes a quantum-proof of work scheme compatible with current quantum computers and demonstrates its feasibility on a 4-qubit superconducting device, aiming to advance practical quantum applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum proof of work scheme tailored for noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices and verifies it experimentally on a small quantum processor.

Findings

Successfully implemented quantum proof of work on a 4-qubit device

Demonstrated potential for quantum advantage in cryptographic tasks

Paved the way for practical quantum applications in blockchain

Abstract

Despite all the progress in quantum technologies over the last decade, there is still a dearth of practical applications for quantum computers with a small number of noisy qubits. The effort to show quantum supremacy has been largely focused on demonstrating computations that cannot be accomplished on a classical computer at all, a difficult and controversial target. Quantum advantage (a speedup over classical computers) is a more practical milestone for today's modest quantum processors. In this work, we proposed a scheme for quantum-computer compatible proof of work (cryptographic mechanism used in Bitcoin mining) and verified it on a 4-qubit superconducting quantum node.