Vitalik Buterin: 5 of the biggest challenges for cryptocurrency today

Ethereum cofounder Vitalik Buterin has released a blog post outlining where the crypto community is in solving some of its biggest, historical challenges. But he then suggested a new list for 2019, combining some previous issues with a few new ones that have snuck in. Here are some of the most pressing topics in his updated list.

Post-quantum cryptography

Elliptic curve cryptography is one of the few things protecting the Bitcoin network from anyone being able to steal anyone else’s bitcoin. And it’s secure because it would need a really powerful computer to crack the encryption.

However, Google’s only gone and built a quantum computer capable of 53 “quantum bits” (qubits), known as Sycamore. It’s able to do calculations that normally take more than 10,000 years to perform, in 200 seconds. This caused many to worry how this will affect the cryptography underlying most cryptocurrencies.

Fuelling the fire, an article by researchers from the Russian Quantum Center…