Quantum Pliers Cutting the Blockchain

Recent years have seen the continuous evolution of technology, which has led to the definition of frameworks such as the internet of things (IoT) and Industry 4.0. These paradigms are producing enormous quantities of data every single day. These data are subject to data analysis, shared publicly or kept secret. Traditionally, this task was carried out using databases. With the advent of Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), instead, these data have a new way of being stored and shared (or kept private). The last actor role in this play is acted by quantum computers, since sufficiently large quantum computers are expected to seriously threaten the security and integrity of DLTs thanks to their totally different way of representing information. This paper aims to investigate the real threats for blockchain due to quantum computing and review post-quantum DLT solutions for traceability applications.

The global scale of industrial production has reached dimensions for which it is difficult for a human being to keep the pace at which the data have to be recorded. This process has necessarily been automatized with the help of a plethora of different technologies. This task automatization is crucial when it comes to traceability applications, which find natural employment in the automotive domain, both from a supply chain perspective and from a vehicle management perspective. There is also the need to store these traceability data in a decentralized way, either to avoid a single point of failure or to ensure that the data cannot be altered by some malicious entity. Blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies (DLTs) are then the way to go if such needs are in place.