What will Quantum Computing Change?

**Sebastien Couture** (0:00)
All of our systems, every single one of them is at risk when we're in a post-quantum world.

**Stefano Gogioso** (0:10)
Most of the classical cryptography community that deals with certification and key exchange protocols knows this very well, has been working on this for years. They already have protocols that they could use if quantum happened tomorrow. Unlike the foundations and communities that govern most of the crypto infrastructure, the Bitcoin community is fairly fragmented and a lot of the big voices are very opinionated. And so there the cultural elements is the more, I think, important factor. In Ethereum, it's a technical element that really makes a big difference. There's so much stack to change.

**John Lilic** (0:51)
So you put it all together and these roadmaps seem to be converging somewhere around 2030, where we're going to have enough logical qubits in play to threaten our elliptic curve.

**Sebastien Couture** (1:09)
Welcome to Epicenter, the show which talks about the technologies, projects and people driving decentralization and the blockchain revolution. I'm Sebastien Couture, and I'm joined by my co-host, Brian Crain. So today we're speaking with John Lilic. He's an OG in Ethereum space, been around for over 10 years. He's previously at ConsenSys, was part of Polygon, and has been talking to Brian and I about quantum cryptography and crypto for a little while now. So we wanted to get him on the show to discuss his thesis for quantum and how it could impact the crypto industry. And then we'll also have Stefano Gogioso, who's a researcher in quantum cryptography. He's a department lecturer at Oxford, and he's the co-founder of NeverLocal, their company that are accelerating real world applications in quantum computing. Hey guys, thanks for joining us.

**Stefano Gogioso** (1:58)
Hello.

**John Lilic** (1:58)
Hello, hello, great to see you guys.

**Stefano Gogioso** (2:00)
Yes, pleasure to be here.

**Sebastien Couture** (2:01)
So before we get into the nitty gritty about quantum computing and how to fix crypto, because I mean, it is a really super complex topic. And I think like we all have a little bit of a grasp about what it is and how it works. But it's, I think, you know, for myself and a lot of people, like super hard to kind of comprehend what quantum computing is and how different it is from regular computing and what kind of applications you can have. But before that, this episode has brought you my Gnosis, building the open Internet one block at a time. Gnosis was founded in 2015 and it's grown from one of Ethereum's earliest projects into a powerful ecosystem for open user owned finance. Gnosis is also the team behind products that had become core to my business and that of so many others, like Safe and CowSwap. At the center is Gnosis Chain. It's a low fee layer one with zero downtime in seven years and is secured by over 300,000 validators. It's the foundation for real world financial applications like Gnosis Pay and Circles.
All of this is governed by Gnosis DAO, a community run organization where anyone with a GNO token can vote on updates, fund new projects and even run a validator from home. So if you're building a Web3 or you're just curious about what financial freedom can look like, start exploring at gnosis.io. I want to ask you John, what got you interested in quantum computing and what convinced you that this idea of quantum native finance is something that's interesting, that we should be looking at, that's possibly investible today, and that it's something that will last into the future?

**John Lilic** (3:33)
Yeah, no, no, great question. So, you know, it's kind of like, I mean, we've known each other a very long time and going back to, you know, the beginning of all this stuff, Ethereum and so on. And I remember many years ago, Brian and I were hanging out, I think we were in Germany with Carson Stoker and a few other people, and we were talking about how amazing smart contracts are and like how everything's going to change, etc. And it was like very exciting and new. And we were just, I mean, just so happy to dive into all this stuff, right? Fast forward to today, to some extent, I feel a little bit saturated, almost like, well, at least in Ethereum, what we're trying to do is just figure out how to rehypothecate things. And it's not nearly as cutting edge as it felt, maybe, you know, seven, eight years ago. And so last summer or last year, I guess towards late summer, early fall, I met Stefano and his co-founder Fabrizio and I met a few others. I call it the special Venn diagram, these folks who are quantum physicists, computer engineers and crypto natives. And that's when I had like a mini panic attack, almost like an existential breakdown moment, when in reality, you know, I learned that the quantum ecosystem is much more dynamic than I had realized up to that point. And I say this all the time, it used to be in the back of my mind that it's, you know, 40 years away. It's going to be this gigantic machine that looks like an alien spaceship that Google builds with the NSA. And I don't need to worry about things. But in reality, again, if you look at the ecosystem, there's of course the big tech companies and Google and IBM and Microsoft, etc. But then you've got this tremendously dynamic startup ecosystem. You've got, you know, PsyQuantum, you've got IonQ, you've got so many of these innovative companies, Oxford Ionics, etc. And so you sort of then look at, let's say, the capital markets or the, you know, venture fund ecosystem. And you've got the biggest sovereign wealth funds, the smartest capital who have for a very long time been investing in this space You know, the UAE, for example, with their sovereign wealth fund has been investing in global foundries for a long time. And then you look at the policy side of it, and it's kind of like you've got top, let's say, policymakers, politicians, etc. in top leadership positions. You know, like Governor Pritzer of Illinois, shilling PsyQuantum all the time. They're building this massive facility in Illinois and so on. You know, elected officials, government leaders all over the world and all the major companies. You look at what's going on in China, etc. And you start to realize that actually this is super dynamic. There's a ton of capital coming in. The regulatory and let's say government will is there. The private sector, both with big tech companies and with startups, is extremely dynamic and moving very, very quickly. And the researchers are just tremendous. You meet some of these people and they're incredible people, very focused on this stuff. Okay, so what does that mean for us? Well, like in my case, and probably many others, you know, watching this, I mean, to some extent or a large extent, our life kind of depends on ECDSA, you know, whether it's our asset base, our career, I mean, even just crypto being a part of your daily life that you enjoy, you know, participating in this ecosystem. And that, as it turns out, is a by-product of, it's a target of this like incredible ecosystem that's advancing. And I understand there's maybe contentious views on the actual utility of quantum computing, whether it's in material science or pharmacy or just making logistics better, et cetera. I don't think it's so contentious, but in any case, it doesn't matter because our elliptic curve that secures everything, and what I mean by that is, you know, if you know my public key, well, you're never going to guess my private key so long as I secure it properly. But with this technology emerging, then that becomes a very different, you know, reality, right? Which is to say, if you do know my public key, you can potentially crack my private key. And so putting it all together, and what I like to say also is you got to look at all the roadmaps because it is indeed true that the startups have a great incentive to say things that sound exciting because they're constantly raising money. But I don't think DARPA has that incentive or TII, which is kind of like the NSA of the UAE. The SEC just put out a pretty significant bulletin.