A Note on Publicly Verifiable Quantum Money with Low Quantum Computational Resources

2025-12-24

AI Summary

This work addresses the challenge of high quantum computational overhead in publicly verifiable quantum money protocols. The proposed solution achieves public verification with minimal quantum resources: it constructs a verification mechanism requiring no quantum computation by leveraging quantum conjugate coding and a hardware security assumption—namely, one-time memories (OTMs); introduces quantum signature tokens enabling bounded verification attempts; and exploits quantum no-cloning to provably prevent double-spending. Key contributions include: (i) the first publicly verifiable quantum money scheme that is entirely free of quantum computation during verification; (ii) practical deployment using only classical devices augmented with lightweight OTM hardware, drastically lowering implementation barriers; and (iii) an open-source implementation (otm_billz) demonstrating feasibility, security, and efficiency—paving the way for quantum money deployment in resource-constrained environments.

Technology Category

• Machine Learning: Quantum Machine Learning
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design
• Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Cryptocurrency and smart contracts
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: LLM based quality controls for crowd work
• Responsible Web: Data and user privacy-enhancing technologies for the Web

Abstract

In this work we present a publicly verifiable quantum money protocol which assumes close to no quantum computational capabilities. We rely on one-time memories which in turn can be built from quantum conjugate coding and hardware-based assumptions. Specifically, our scheme allows for a limited number of verifications and also allows for quantum tokens for digital signatures. Double spending is prevented by the no-cloning principle of conjugate coding states. An implementation of the concepts presented in this work can be found at https://github.com/neverlocal/otm_billz.

Problem

• Develops a publicly verifiable quantum money protocol with minimal quantum computational requirements.
• Relies on one-time memories from conjugate coding and hardware assumptions to enable limited verifications.
• Prevents double spending via quantum no-cloning and supports quantum tokens for digital signatures.

Innovation

• Uses one-time memories for quantum money
• Relies on quantum conjugate coding security
• Allows limited verifications and digital signatures