WEBVTT

NOTE
Automatic transcript with corrections to names and technical terms. May contain transcription errors.

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 Meet yourself and tell us what you're going to talk about.

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 Yeah, I'm Rick Carback.

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 I work with Quantum Computers now.

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 In Zcash land, I'm best known as a mixnet guy.

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 My fondest memory, well, fondest and sort of most regrettable memory with Zcash is

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 I came to a conference much like this.

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 And about an hour before I was supposed to talk, they had announced.

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 I forget who it was, but we wanted the Tornado Cash or Samourai Wallet guys, got

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 arrested.

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 And I was going to announce how I was planning to launch my mixnet for like five

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 cents a transaction.

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 We could put Shield and Zcash transactions through the mixnet.

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 And I was told in sort of no uncertain terms by an unlisted number, if you make

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 money on crypto right now, the government will come after you.

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 You are a U.S. citizen, you're okay.

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 And I was like, shit, okay, not going to announce that.

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 So that's my fun Zcash story for you.

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 I know one of the previous speakers said, you know, sometimes it feels like the

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 deck is stacked against you.

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 And then especially the private space, that is true.

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 There is government activity and they're trying to suppress it sometimes.

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 Sometimes they're not.

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 I don't know.

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 You know, I think today, these days, if you're sort of a large project and you're

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 doing a lot of different things, you know, we're going to hear from Nym after my

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 speech, I believe.

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 And they're doing exactly what I was proposing all those years ago.

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 But these days, and academically, I'm sorry, I didn't finish my intro, I did a lot

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 of civic tech.

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 So my PhD thesis is in privacy enhancing electronic voting systems.

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 So you get a receipt when you vote, but it doesn't prove how you vote, which

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 obviously is a mixnet based platform.

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 So that's a little bit about me.

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 These days, I work in quantum computers.

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 We are largely building a platform to sell quantum compute.

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 We're building the world's shared quantum computer because you can take qubits, and

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 we've heard of this term called entanglement.

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 You can entangle qubits across the pistons.

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 And what that means is we take different quantum computer installations and entangle

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 the qubits across fiber optic cable.

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 So our ultimate goal, our vision, is to be that.

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 So for those of you who are Zcash people and you're worried about privacy, the too

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 long, didn't watch, didn't pay attention to this presentation,

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 is switch to Orchard and hope that NU7 comes quicker than it's been coming.

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 And be ready to upgrade anytime there's an upgrade so that you are on NU7 as fast

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 as possible.

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 And hope that they actually fix things in NU8 or NU9 of the protocol.

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 Because Zcash has problems, and I'll be telling you to wake up.

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 So the problem here is quantum computers can break ECC crypto.

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 ECC crypto is what essentially all modern privacy technology is built on with a few

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 exceptions.

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 So hash-based ZK-STARKs are one of the exceptions.

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 There's very few of them.

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 The trade-off tends to be when you're using these hash-based methods, key sizes are

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 massive, the resources required are significant.

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 So that's sort of the problem we're dealing with here.

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 The other problem is everyone thinks that it's like 5, 10, well, the current

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 thinking is 5 years away.

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 The thinking up until about 2024 was that it was always 20 years away.

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 And the last 3 years, it went from 10 years to 5 years.

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 And my personal opinion, that's my website, thequantumdoomclock.com, is if you look

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 at the exponential growth, if you look at the error correction rate improvements

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 over the last couple of years,

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 you're seeing two years, you're seeing two things exponentially growing in opposite

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 directions, and you're going to enter this gray space in 2028, specifically March

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 2028, according to the raw data I have,

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 where it's not going to be clear that a quantum computer is in that state where it

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 can break crypto or not.

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 And then after that point, you just kind of have to throw your hands up in the air

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 and say, maybe what I'm doing is broken, but maybe it's fine.

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 And hopefully a few years later, we'll find out one way or the other.

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 A great example of this kind of thing that happened most recently, about two months

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 ago, Google released a paper.

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 They said, oh, we've published the required number of logical qubits.

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 So there's this concept of a logical versus a physical qubit.

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 You used to need, like, several hundred thousand physical qubits.

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 That was 2024's number.

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 2026's number is 30.

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 So that's a big improvement.

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 And that's from Alice and Bob.

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 They say they're going to release a computer by the end of the year, but they're

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 going to be able to implement a logical qubit in 30 physical qubits.

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 So the logical qubit count required went from about 1,800 to break ECC all the way

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 down to about 1,400 in their numbers, 13 to 1,400 in their numbers.

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 And now it's 40% lower two months later.

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 And they published all this under a zero-knowledge proof, but people figured out

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 how to, like, essentially get around that because there's enough public information

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 that just derived the right process.

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 So we're already 44% data from Google's numbers two months ago.

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 So this is kind of, like, the exponential problem.

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 And then the person who has been the most vocal and the person all the news

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 articles cite saying, oh, quantum computers are always 20 years away from crypto.

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 He just published that three months ago saying, don't say I didn't warn you.

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 Look, I don't know what's going to happen the next couple of years.

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 So with that, you know, this is just illustrating the point.

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 Like, yeah, it looks really flat until you see you get a little bit more

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 progressive and everything builds on it.

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 We're finance people here mostly.

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 I hope we would understand, like, compound interest.

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 But, like, this is, like, compound interest on steroids.

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 It's literally a doubling or a tripling in the span of the year.

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 So, and we don't have very far to go.

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 These are numbers from 2025 when it was, like, about a billion physical qubits that

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 you needed.

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 Now it's, like, a little closer to, like, $600.

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 So those lines are going lower and the number of qubits is going up.

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 Since this is a technical audience, I actually get to teach you, like, why and how

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 quantum computers work.

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 So what this slide is showing you is essentially, like, an adder array gate on a

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 quantum computer.

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 And we are doing this thing where we are looking at these three-minute inputs and

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 we're determining whether they're constant or balanced using those definitions on

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 the screen.

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 I'll let you read that.

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 And when you run the quantum computer, you run this Atomar transform gate on all

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 things.

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 You run the function.

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 You run the Atomar transfer gate again.

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 And you do this, like, little twist on them.

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 And then you read it and you get the answer.

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 So how many times does that algorithm run?

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 So the circuit lights up, runs through it once.

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 Now, when we make the problem bigger, like, let's say we're going to do four bits

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 as opposed to three bits.

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 Yeah, I need another qubit, right?

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 But it's a constant time algorithm, whereas this is going to explode exponentially,

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 right?

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 So it's a massive amount of additional work that you would have to do on a

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 classical computer.

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 And what you're doing, like, the mental model you should have with quantum is, like,

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 a 2D grid and, like, a line, right?

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 And a classical computer has to go a little bit in the X direction, a little bit in

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 the Y direction to get to the end state value.

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 And the quantum computer just goes right there in one step.

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 And that's not true, like, generally speaking, for all algorithms.

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 But there do exist this class of algorithms of which the discrete log problem was

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 one of them that caused this problem.

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 The great thing about it is that this is going to change the world, right?

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 So there's applications in finance, there's applications in logistics.

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 If you were here two days ago at the hackathon, we showed you finance optimization

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 where we did, we figured out what crypto was optimal to use to buy your bit refill

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 cards.

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 We used the actual quantum computer that we have access to.

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 So it can run these problems right now.

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 I mean, obviously, you can run either a simulation or the exact same computation

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 classically right now, and it's about the same.

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 But once you get past about 50 qubits, it becomes impossible to do the simulation.

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 And then you, on the classical side, to keep up, you have to start doing, you know,

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 estimations of the algorithm for it to work.

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 In privacy, we have a bigger problem, which is harvest now, detriple later.

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 Ten years ago, I said, oh, well, we'll do some things where we'll do some hash-based

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 signatures, and then the signatures will be secure.

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 And for key agreement, we'll add some things in there to sort of prevent it from

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 being breakable after the fact.

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 And I, you know, proposed some things, wrote some things, published some code, and

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 said, well, it's probably 30, 40 years away still.

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 I'll be dead, most likely, or I'll be retired.

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 It's not going to matter to me.

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 And, in fact, in grad school, I literally had a professor say, we're going to talk

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 about quantum computers today and why they're relevant to crypto.

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 It's like one lecture.

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 And he said, don't worry about it.

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 It's probably not you.

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 It's going to be your students or their students that are going to be worried about

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 this.

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 So I never really thought I would be here in this moment.

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 So the hardest now to encrypt later problem is we can take encrypted data today,

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 like the Zcash transaction, the Shielded Zcash transaction that we did earlier at

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 the beginning of the talks.

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 And we can look at that encrypted data and we can uncover what was happening there

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 after the fact, which all crypto kind of has that vulnerability.

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 But typically we say, oh, it's going to be 30, 50, 100 years.

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 That's like a cryptographer gets uncomfortable when you say it's going to be computable

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 in 30 years.

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 They're generally comfortable once you say it's decryptable in like 50 to 100 years.

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 So it's like that tends to be what most crypto is rated for and it's like 30 to 100

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 years.

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 But we're going to be in this period, probably in the next five to 10 years where

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 everything the previous five to 10 years was is going to be decryptable.

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 And that's a big problem for privacy crypto, because basically all of it, with a

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 couple of exceptions, is vulnerable in one way or another.

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 Proof systems, that's CK proofs.

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 The stars are not vulnerable because they're hash based.

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 Message anonymizers, anonymous authentication systems, confidential ledgers, that

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 would be Zcash, Monero.

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 We're going to talk, deep Zcash is special, so we're going to talk a little bit

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 about that in the next couple of slides.

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 Multiparty computation, threshold encryption is vulnerable.

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 And then encrypted aggregators, so like groups, signature type things, they're

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 generally vulnerable.

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 And there are essentially not a lot of solutions available right now.

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 There are solutions available for the signatures, and there are solutions available

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 for, you know, key agreement right now.

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 That's what NIST has approved, but they rely on algebraic constructions that just

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 haven't been figured out or just aren't workable in the current ecosystem yet.

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 So let's think about Zcash specifically.

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 So these three boxes, transparent transactions, if you use it, your funds are

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 stolen in the context of a quantum computer.

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 If you're using Sprout or Sapling, you're, in some cases, your funds are taken, in

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 some cases, we're able to, like, counterfeit funds in the shielding pool.

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 There is a protection in Zcash where you can't take out more funds than went into

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 the shielding pool, but that's just, like, you're the bag holder.

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 Like, that's not a real protection.

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 So be aware of that.

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 On Orchard, the proof system is broken, but the privacy, if you never publish the

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 spending key, which when you put the QR code, spending the money, you publish the

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 spending key, is protected if you never publish.

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 So now, your public keys are, essentially, you have to treat them like secrets.

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 So if you treat your public keys like secrets and you're using Orchard, you're,

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 generally speaking, going to be okay on the privacy side, but the proof system is

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 going to fail when a quantum computer comes over.

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 And U7 fixes that.

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 There's two main things.

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 Tachyon is the one that fixes the privacy.

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 They just remove the note effectively.

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 I mean, I'm oversimplifying it, but they remove the note that would make it

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 possible to do the dicker.

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 To break the key that would enable you to de-anonymize the transaction.

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 And then on the left side, there's the Zip 2005, which will recover the funds, and

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 contract your funds.

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 But there's still this proof soundness problem that is opening the air.

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 And hopefully, I think that there's time to fix it.

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 I think, you know, we do, even on my most aggressive timeline, March 2028, that's

00:13:22.800 --> 00:13:25.080
 still two years, about two years away.

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 I do think we're going to be, generally speaking, okay.

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 So, just, this is the takeaway of the talk.

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 Orchard preserves privacy, but a quantum computer can still break that proof system.

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 And that's what we need to be worried about.

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 What do we do about it?

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 I'll just say that privacy techniques go back a long way prior to crypto.

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 There's a famous, you know, principle from a guy named Kirchhoff from 1883, and Claude

00:13:55.220 --> 00:13:56.060
 Shannon.

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 Do you guys know Shannon entropy?

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 Or, like, the imitation game?

00:14:03.820 --> 00:14:05.600
 Like, or the movie?

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 Like, just the guy that sort of invented a lot of, like, the base principles of

00:14:10.600 --> 00:14:11.800
 cryptography.

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 And a lot of mathematics, as well, he coined the phrase, the enemy knows the system.

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 So, you have to operate as if the enemy knows the system.

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 And we know that very well.

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 And this is sort of the general advice.

00:14:24.080 --> 00:14:25.660
 I already told you the first one.

00:14:25.920 --> 00:14:28.360
 Public keys are our secrets now, so treat them as such.

00:14:29.460 --> 00:14:30.800
 You know, compartmentalization.

00:14:31.240 --> 00:14:34.570
 We had a great example of that, where you have to share your viewing key on one of

00:14:34.570 --> 00:14:35.380
 the tools.

00:14:36.100 --> 00:14:39.880
 And so, the general advice is, use this for your public storefront.

00:14:39.960 --> 00:14:41.860
 Use a separate wallet for everything else.

00:14:42.120 --> 00:14:43.160
 I think that's really good advice.

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 Suit it in.

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 So, build a wallet.

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 Use it for a transaction.

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 Throw it away.

00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:49.220
 Don't keep things around too long.

00:14:50.200 --> 00:14:53.620
 Again, upgrade, upgrade, upgrade, especially when new crypto comes out.

00:14:54.100 --> 00:14:57.290
 I know that there's kind of a double-edged sword in that the new crypto is

00:14:57.290 --> 00:14:59.280
 generally not, is less trustworthy.

00:14:59.640 --> 00:15:04.220
 This is one of those cases where I would just upgrade immediately, because,

00:15:04.220 --> 00:15:05.280
 especially after 2028,

00:15:06.100 --> 00:15:07.760
 I just don't know what's going to happen.

00:15:07.880 --> 00:15:10.680
 We can walk computers and minimize the expires.

00:15:10.780 --> 00:15:12.600
 It's just kind of a summary of everything I just talked about.

00:15:14.100 --> 00:15:15.340
 There are cryptographers.

00:15:15.580 --> 00:15:18.020
 They are working on solutions in general.

00:15:18.680 --> 00:15:21.220
 The resources required are significantly more.

00:15:23.220 --> 00:15:27.560
 And the confidential ledgers is the biggest one that I'm worried about.

00:15:27.900 --> 00:15:31.260
 But, you know, I think that it is possible to solve these problems.

00:15:31.360 --> 00:15:32.860
 I just don't know how it's going to play out.

00:15:33.320 --> 00:15:34.240
 So, I'm not worried.

00:15:34.300 --> 00:15:37.420
 On the long tail of crypto, in general, I'm an optimist.

00:15:37.480 --> 00:15:42.420
 But I will tell you, in 2024, when I realized, like, the trend that we were seeing,

00:15:42.420 --> 00:15:43.900
 I went

00:15:43.900 --> 00:15:46.980
 through a very deep, dark period of about three months where I just disappeared.

00:15:47.240 --> 00:15:50.210
 And I was like, man, everything I've been working on my whole career is, like,

00:15:50.210 --> 00:15:50.980
 bullshit now.

00:15:51.700 --> 00:15:53.820
 And it took a while to get over that.

00:15:53.940 --> 00:15:56.140
 And I realized, well, these things are really cool.

00:15:56.320 --> 00:15:57.260
 They do a lot of neat stuff.

00:15:57.700 --> 00:16:01.180
 And they're going to have commercial applicability probably in the next year or so.

00:16:01.440 --> 00:16:02.320
 I think that's really cool.

00:16:03.920 --> 00:16:08.840
 With that, questions, I'm on Signal.

00:16:09.420 --> 00:16:10.240
 You can find me.

00:16:10.460 --> 00:16:12.460
 And I think I brought my business card.

00:16:12.560 --> 00:16:13.980
 I'll hand this out, too, if anyone's interested.

00:16:13.980 --> 00:16:16.720
 Thank you so much.

