Quantum Computing and Post-Quantum Security
Korea Blockchain Week (KBW) 2026
Richard Carback and Colton Dillion

Automatic transcript with corrections to names and technical terms.
May contain transcription errors. Includes setup chatter and repeated takes.
Timestamps refer to the full recording.

[00:00:00] All right, so yeah, we'll start with an introduction, and then we'll kick things
[00:00:05] off.
[00:00:06] That's good.
[00:00:06] Perfect.
[00:00:09] And could you introduce yourself?
[00:00:11] Hi, my name is Colton Dillion, and I'm the CEO at Postquant Labs.
[00:00:15] And I'm Richard Carback, and I'm the CTO of Postquant Labs.
[00:00:19] And together, we're building Quip Network.
[00:00:25] Put those chairs so that people can't do that.
[00:00:29] Yeah.
[00:00:30] Perfect.
[00:00:32] Yeah, yeah.
[00:00:33] All right, take two.
[00:00:36] Okay, again?
[00:00:37] Yeah.
[00:00:38] Three, two.
[00:00:39] Hi, my name is Colton Dillion, and I'm the CEO of Postquant Labs.
[00:00:43] And my name is Richard Carback, and I'm the CTO.
[00:00:46] And together, we're building Quip Network, the worldwide quantum computer.
[00:00:51] All right, so the first theme is, why now, not later?
[00:00:55] Why the quantum conversation belongs in 2026, rather than some undefined future day?
[00:01:03] Yeah, so when we got started back in 2024, we actually put together a really dumb
[00:01:11] model at quantumdoomclock.com, where we brought together all of the performance
[00:01:17] characteristics of the different quantum machines that were commercially available.
[00:01:21] And we said, what if all of these different pieces were going to grow on an
[00:01:26] exponential curve?
[00:01:27] When should we expect quantum computers to be good enough that they could break
[00:01:32] cryptography?
[00:01:33] And so we looked at all of these segments of exponential growth, and we basically
[00:01:39] determined that in March 2028, there was a really good chance that we were going to
[00:01:45] have a cryptographically relevant quantum computer.
[00:01:51] And, you know, IonQ, just a few weeks ago, published technical documents saying
[00:01:57] that they would have enough qubits to break Bitcoin secp256k1 by mid-2028.
[00:02:05] So if they stay on track, the time is now.
[00:02:09] Yeah, right now you have roughly about 18 months before we enter a gray period,
[00:02:14] where you may or may not be vulnerable to a quantum computer.
[00:02:18] That's pretty scary.
[00:02:19] And there's, just to expand on what Colton said, there's two factors at play.
[00:02:23] There's the error rate, which is going down, and then there's the exponential
[00:02:27] growth of the number of qubits on the machines.
[00:02:31] Oh, sounds good.
[00:02:33] Let's go to the second key.
[00:02:37] Second one is, collect now, decrypt later, and crypto data can be stored today and
[00:02:42] open once the machines are strong enough.
[00:02:46] So the risk starts before the machine arrives.
[00:02:49] Yeah, your chance to not be vulnerable against, technically it's called harvest now,
[00:02:53] decrypt later.
[00:02:55] HNDL is what the industry typically calls it.
[00:02:58] And your chance to deal with that was about 10 years ago in 2015 or so.
[00:03:04] And that time has pretty much passed.
[00:03:06] At this point, you should be very concerned about the signature algorithms, which
[00:03:11] are also vulnerable to the quantum computers.
[00:03:13] And they do not, they are not, they are not, they are not, they're not protecting
[00:03:18] the privacy of anything.
[00:03:20] So if you have data and you want to protect the privacy of it, you really need to
[00:03:24] be doing that post-quantum encryption yesterday.
[00:03:27] And if you have, if you want to protect your funds, or if you're trying to start
[00:03:31] like a real estate contract or something like that, that's going to last more than
[00:03:35] five years, you really need to be using a post-quantum solution today.
[00:03:40] I don't really have much to add to that.
[00:03:42] I, the, the wonderful thing about this is, is that you do have an opportunity to
[00:03:47] move into new keys or to rotate your keys.
[00:03:51] But the key thing is that you need to start planning now.
[00:03:54] If you ask governments around the world, they're saying everybody should be
[00:03:58] migrated by 2030.
[00:04:00] And, uh, so that's not a lot of time if you run a critical application, you should
[00:04:05] be thinking about what's your plan to get moving today.
[00:04:15] Yeah, so, uh, basically quantum computers vary in size and capabilities, in, uh,
[00:04:29] sort of the rate at which errors accumulate on the machines.
[00:04:32] And so, uh, depending on which manufacturer you go to, they may have very different
[00:04:37] performance characteristics.
[00:04:39] But what we can say is that we're just starting to hit this point where quantum
[00:04:43] computers can do things that the largest computer clusters in the world cannot, uh,
[00:04:48] stand up to.
[00:04:50] And so, uh, if you have one of these applications that quantum computers excel at,
[00:04:54] things like simulating molecular, uh, dynamics, things like, uh, generating, uh,
[00:05:01] quantum circuits and, and providing randomness from those quantum circuits, things
[00:05:06] like combinatorial optimization.
[00:05:08] We're just starting to hit that inflection point where quantum computers are outperforming
[00:05:13] very large clusters of GPUs.
[00:05:15] And the weird thing about this is that they have exponential growth in terms of the
[00:05:20] capabilities of the machines.
[00:05:23] And so the difference between, uh, a quantum computer that you can simulate on your
[00:05:28] laptop is say 30 qubits versus a quantum computer that can't be simulated by the
[00:05:33] largest machines in the world is as small as 60 qubits.
[00:05:36] And so, you know, right now, a lot of the commercially available, uh, hardware is
[00:05:42] in that 36 qubit range.
[00:05:45] Uh, you know, maybe they have 90 qubits or 256 qubits, but they're not fully
[00:05:49] connected.
[00:05:50] And so the next generation of hardware is where we're really going to blow that out
[00:05:54] of the water, where you have 96 qubit machines, 150 qubit machines that are fully
[00:05:59] connected and you cannot simulate them with the largest computers on earth.
[00:06:04] So those 150 qubit machines that Colton's talking about, they're not, they're not
[00:06:07] what's going to be breaking your crypto.
[00:06:10] It'll be the machines that are released in 2028 that are projected to hit about 20,000
[00:06:14] to 50,000 qubits.
[00:06:16] And in terms of what the quantum computers can do today, I would really focus on
[00:06:20] what we, what you can do with Quip Network today.
[00:06:23] And that is you can run a suite of these types of optimization problems.
[00:06:28] If you go to our website, you'll find, uh, an example called Qubitrefill that lets
[00:06:33] you, that helps you buy gift cards with crypto and select what asset in your asset
[00:06:37] portfolio is the best one to sell at the current time.
[00:06:40] And that's a portfolio, uh, asset optimization problem, which is a really good
[00:06:44] example of the types of things you can do.
[00:06:47] You can do some of this stuff classically.
[00:06:49] So what we see is the shape of the problem has to be amenable to a quantum computer
[00:06:53] and specifically the shapes that, that are really helpful right now are these, what
[00:06:59] we call rigid topologies.
[00:07:00] And we'll be publishing work on that very soon.
[00:07:02] The other thing that you can do right now is verifiable random number generation.
[00:07:06] There's a very good paper on the internet.
[00:07:08] Uh, I think it's called how to, how to do verifiable random number generation with
[00:07:12] a quantum computer.
[00:07:13] Again, that's cited on our website.
[00:07:15] We've codified that into a product where you give the quantum computer a challenge
[00:07:18] and you say, well, you have to respond within so many blocks.
[00:07:22] And if it's able to do that response, you know, that a classical computer hasn't
[00:07:26] been able to simulate that and the result of this random circuit, uh, sampling
[00:07:32] operation is a verifiable random result.
[00:07:38] Um, why so like why, what is Quip looking for in Korea and the wider Asia and why
[00:07:43] did you guys choose KBW to come and do things like that?
[00:07:48] Yes. Uh, so when we say worldwide quantum computer, we mean worldwide, uh, every
[00:07:53] single region on earth should be a part of this network and should be able to
[00:07:57] contribute to it and to get advantage from these machines.
[00:08:01] Uh, Seoul is actually very cutting edge in terms of taking advantage of some of
[00:08:06] these quantum computers, uh, Joseon university.
[00:08:10] And, uh, I believe South Korea university, uh, both have their own quantum
[00:08:14] computers.
[00:08:15] And so there's already this capability here in South Korea.
[00:08:19] And we want to make sure that we include this community as we build out this open
[00:08:23] source software and as we build out the, uh, availability of these other computers
[00:08:29] that may not be available locally.
[00:08:31] And so, you know, why KBW there's no better time if you're in distributed systems
[00:08:36] to get involved with researchers, with, uh, really passionate people who are ready
[00:08:41] to develop on these open source distributed networks.
[00:08:44] And, uh, we thought it was a great opportunity to, uh, arrive here as a large
[00:08:50] community was coming together to enjoy, uh, sort of the fruit of all of this
[00:08:56] development that goes on in crypto, in, uh, web three and in these distributed
[00:09:02] systems.
[00:09:05] I don't, uh, I don't have anything to add to that.
[00:09:06] Okay.
[00:09:07] Okay.
[00:09:07] So what comes next, um, what are you guys building towards and what builders and
[00:09:14] funds should be looking forward to?
[00:09:16] Yeah.
[00:09:16] So, uh, you know, the main thing that we're building right now is the smart
[00:09:20] contract language for the Quip virtual machine.
[00:09:23] Uh, we're hoping that developers will be able to use this to more easily get up to
[00:09:27] speed with quantum computing.
[00:09:29] And it won't take you a five year PhD or doctorate to, uh, sort of understand what's
[00:09:34] going on and get your first good results from the machine over time.
[00:09:39] We hope that we are actually building entanglement into the network and that the
[00:09:44] way you get access to the most powerful systems in the world is by trusting quip
[00:09:49] network with your computation.
[00:09:50] And so, you know, we're looking for collaborators.
[00:09:53] We're looking for, uh, developers to help us build this vision and for operators of
[00:09:59] these computers to join the network and to benchmark the machines.
[00:10:03] And we hope that everyone will join us for that ride.
[00:10:07] I'm going to answer a different question than you asked, which is what am I most
[00:10:10] excited about?
[00:10:12] Uh, and I am most excited about the different types of things we'll be able to
[00:10:17] expose to people because now it becomes available to them.
[00:10:21] Uh, much like when computing was first invented, it was only a select few that
[00:10:26] could use it.
[00:10:27] And we're really hoping to be able to bring that to regular people.
[00:10:30] I expect that you'll be able to use quantum computers to optimize your fantasy
[00:10:34] football team, uh, in addition to the, the bit refill example, uh, in the very near
[00:10:39] future.
[00:10:40] And I hope that will encourage people to not only, you know, participate on the
[00:10:44] network by using it, but also participate by, you know, buying one of these smaller
[00:10:49] quantum computers and then helping to mine on the network or, you know, just
[00:10:53] lending us a GPU.
[00:10:53] If you have spare compute capacity to help simulate some of this stuff, because
[00:10:57] that's a big part of what we do right now.
[00:10:59] And, you know, to add onto that, uh, the original purpose of classical computing
[00:11:05] was breaking cryptography.
[00:11:07] And so a lot of people are really focused on, oh man, the quantum computers are
[00:11:10] going to break cryptography.
[00:11:12] But that's exactly how we started with classical computing and the world evolved
[00:11:16] once they saw that that threat was a capability.
[00:11:20] And very few people could have foreseen all of the magic of the internet, of AI,
[00:11:25] all of the wonderful things that we take for granted today that came out of
[00:11:28] classical computing.
[00:11:29] And we really see that it's going to be the exact same thing with quantum where,
[00:11:33] you know, it might be scary right now, but there's also a whole world of
[00:11:37] opportunity out there that's waiting for you to explore it.
[00:11:39] So we hope you'll join us and come explore that opportunity.
[00:11:43] Now, I'll just point out that the way it breaks cryptography is solving this
[00:11:48] problem called the hidden subgroup problem.
[00:11:49] Cryptographers know it as a discrete log problem, but that hidden subgroup problem
[00:11:55] has a lot of actual real world application in terms of if you can identify subgroups
[00:11:59] in these larger groups in mathematical systems, then you have this ability to
[00:12:04] potentially simulate different parts of the environment.
[00:12:08] Do drug discovery better, do drug discovery better, there's all kinds of things,
[00:12:12] use cases that this can apply to.