An introduction to quantum coin-tossing

TL;DR

This paper reviews quantum coin-tossing protocols, discussing their security and how they enable two distrustful remote parties to generate a shared random bit using classical or quantum communication.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of quantum coin-tossing protocols and analyzes their security aspects, highlighting the differences from classical methods.

Findings

Quantum protocols can secure coin tossing against certain attacks.

Security depends on the type of communication channel used.

Quantum coin tossing offers advantages over classical approaches.

Abstract

We review the quantum version of a well known problem of cryptography called coin tossing (``flipping a coin via telephone''). It can be regarded as a game where two remote players (who distrust each other) tries to generate a uniformly distributed random bit which is common to both parties. The only resource they can use to perform this task is a classical or quantum communication channel. In this paper we provide a general overview over such coin tossing protocols, concerning in particular their security.