‘We should migrate now’ to post-quantum encryption, researcher says

Gianluca Di Bella, a smart contract researcher specializing in zero-knowledge proofs, says the danger posed by quantum computing isn’t a distant concern — it’s a current one.

Speaking to Cointelegraph at the UN City offices in Copenhagen, Denmark, Di Bella said he believes “we should migrate now” to post-quantum encryption standards. The reason, he explained, lies in so-called “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, where data is collected and stored until future technology makes decryption possible.

For instance, if the identity of a dissident in a totalitarian country is protected solely by encryption, they want to ensure that the data will remain safe for 10, 15, 20 or more years into the future. Di Bella said that practical commercial quantum computing might be 10 or 15 years away, but cautioned that “big institutions like Microsoft or Google might have a solution in a few years.”

Di Bella raised an issue with what he calls “quantum washing,” which sees companies make dubious claims about the properties and capabilities of quantum systems. Still, he shared fears that if China were to develop systems capable of breaking modern cryptography, they would be unlikely to warn the rest of the world of their newfound capability.

Gianluca Di Bella at UN City in Copenhagen, Denmark. Source: Cointelegraph

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Post-quantum zero-knowledge proofs

Once — or if, according to some — quantum computing reaches the necessary power and scale, it could undermine the security assumptions of traditional encryption and zero-knowledge proofs. This could result in encrypted data being decrypted and proofs generated by traditional ZK-proofs being forged, faking valid statements or bypassing verification.

Several post-quantum encryption standards already exist, with some approved by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — specifically ML-KEM, ML-DSA and SLH-DSA. But no comparable post-quantum ZK-proof standard has reached maturity. This is an area of research that Di Bella engages with through the smart contract development company he co-founded, Mood Global Services.

Di Bella pointed to Permutations over Lagrange bases for Oecumenical Noninteractive arguments of Knowledge (PLONK) as a post-quantum ZK-proof implementation. Still, they are not “battle tested” and are currently seen as a research implementation.

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A long road ahead

Talking about how long he expects PLONK development to reach a stage suitable for real-world usage, Di Bella said that it is hard to make timeline predictions and lamented the lack of investment in the sector. He noted that it is a niche subject and engaging with it requires significant specialized knowledge, significantly decreasing investment and slowing development.

“If you are a research and development manager of any corporation, you don’t invest in something that you don’t understand,“ he said.

Di Bella said ZK-proof development is carried out in low-level Rust programming with little abstraction and high complexity. In a way, most ZK-proof systems are programmed in a manner reminiscent of the complexity of early programming.

While we are now used to high-level programming languages abstracting complexity, programming this kind of system is “definitely math again,” Di Bella said.

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