Jeffrey Hoffstein and Joseph Silverman, professors in the Brown Mathematics Department, are working on solutions that compress quantum safe signatures and utilize lattice technology to provide safe and effective blockchain security solutions. The project is attracting venture capital interest.

With existing quantum safe signatures, a direct transition to blockchains will decrease the "transactions per second" by orders of magnitude. This is because these quantum safe signatures are orders of magnitude larger than non-quantum safe signatures, and transactions per second is inversely proportional to the size of the signature.  For both crypto assets and exchanges, $2 trillion and $19 trillion markets respectively, if this transition is not made, existing crypto secure technology will be broken in seconds. Any solution to protect blockchains against quantum threats needs to be both secure and efficient to maintain and improve blockchain performance.

The Lattice Based approach for blockchain security developed by Hoffstein and his colleagues is intended as an improvement over existing methods. Technologies such as ECDSA, the one presently in primary in use for protecting blockchains, have excellent Public Key and Signature Sizes, but will be broken by quantum computers.  Existing Lattice Based quantum safe approaches have such large signature sizes that they would be impractical if used.

For these reasons Brown researchers, and collaborators Berk Sunar and Yarkin Doraz at Worcester Polytechnic, believe developing a secure blockchain methodology in a post quantum computing world has both academic and practical applications. It furthers Brown's contributions to mathematics knowledge and in practical terms could help protect the future of finance for years to come.