26 January 2024 - QSig Workshop

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Background

More than 50 years ago, Stephen Wiesner envisioned how the uncertainty principle could be harnessed to create truly unforgeable quantum money. In the last fifteen years, a flurry of developments in the field of quantum-enhanced protocols have suggested new exciting ways in which financial technologies can potentially benefit from quantum technology.

Notably, in 2010, Aaronson introduced publicly verifiable quantum money by suitably applying the no-cloning theorem. This was a departure from Wiesner's original scheme, where only the issuer could verify the banknotes. More recently, one-shot signatures were introduced by Amos, Georgiou, Kiayias, and Zhandry (STOC 2020). Such signatures enable digital signatures with classical verification and at most one message signing—an impossible property to achieve in the classical setting but enforceable only through quantum means.

In our context, one-shot signatures enable payments with pure classical communication without the need to transmit quantum states. While these developments bring us closer to harnessing the properties of quantum systems, there remains a significant need for research to develop quantum-enhanced protocols into realisable financial technology. 

The QSig workshop aims to bring together academics and industry experts from various fields, including quantum computing, quantum information theory, cryptography, blockchain, and financial technology applications. The goal is to establish a common understanding of the relevant problems and contribute to future research. This research will address the remaining open questions that need to be resolved before quantum-enhanced financial technologies become a reality.  

Organising Committee 

• Alexandru Cojocaru (University of Edinburgh)

• Aggelos Kiayias (University of Edinburgh & IOG)

• Petros Wallden (University of Edinburgh)
• Justin Drake (Ethereum Foundation)
• Elham Kashefi (NQCC, CNRS, University of Edinburgh)