A team behind an experimental blockchain network called Quip says it has shown, for the first time, that D-Wave’s Advantage2 quantum processing unit can mine cryptocurrency-style blocks while using dramatically less electricity. But even as researchers point t
A quantum computer winning a mining contest isn’t supposed to be easy. In the first experiment of its kind, researchers say D-Wave’s Advantage2 has been doing exactly that inside an experimental blockchain network called Quip, running since April.
Cryptocurrencies sit at a strange intersection of modern computing. A quantum computer powerful enough could, in theory, break the encryption algorithms that keep today’s cryptocurrencies secure. At the same time. several studies have argued that quantum computers could slash the enormous energy use that often comes with crypto mining.
Quip was designed to test that second claim in practice.
On the network. proof of work is used to decide who gets to add the next block to the ledger—a public record similar to a database. where new entries become permanent once a block is accepted. For most cryptocurrencies, the winning computer is rewarded with coins, and the block’s addition locks in the transaction.
In Quip, the proof-of-work task is not framed as a purely artificial puzzle. It’s a type of optimization problem tied to real-world scheduling and decision-making—described by the researchers as related to tasks such as finding the best way to schedule deliveries for a food service or assembling an ideal investment portfolio.
Most of the computers participating are conventional machines. But Quip also includes an Advantage2 quantum computer built by D-Wave Quantum, and the team says it is outperforming the ordinary devices.
Carlos Perez-Delgado at the University of Kent in the UK—who isn’t involved with Quip—pinned down what makes the setup interesting. The optimization problem, he said, is hard enough to challenge classical devices without becoming impossible for either type of machine. “This means that quantum technologies have a real opportunity to have a huge impact,” Perez-Delgado said.
The experiment arrives against a backdrop of long-running disputes about what D-Wave quantum computers can truly do. In 2024. the firm claimed one of its quantum computers had solved a problem that would have been impossible for even a conventional supercomputer. A different team later reported performing a similar computation on a normal laptop just a year later.
Colton Dillion at Postquant Labs. who set up Quip with his colleagues. argues the blockchain format may help bypass that kind of argument. Dillion says Quip’s decentralized nature lets skeptics verify the results themselves: “It’s exactly why it is a blockchain. People who don’t believe our results can join the network and try it for themselves.”.
For the quantum competitor, time is a key detail. Speaking at an investor presentation on 1 June. D-Wave CEO Alan Baratz said Advantage2 is only available to Quip for about 5 minutes each day. Dillion says that means Advantage2 competes on roughly a third of the blocks added to the network. Even with that constraint. he says it wins 92 per cent of those blocks—suggesting that for Quip’s proof-of-work problem. the quantum machine has an advantage over the rest of the network.
Energy is where the claim becomes especially striking.
Baratz told the presentation that Advantage2 uses a lot less energy to solve the problem than other computers competing with it. But the two firms have not yet published detailed benchmarking studies.
Even so, Dillion says the preliminary numbers from Quip are clear. On average, he says using Advantage2 takes about 100 times less electrical power—12.5 watts compared with 1334 watts—to win a block. Dillion also estimates that a conventional computer that could win the block more often against Advantage2 would need 300 times its power.
There’s another selling point baked into the design. The Quip network was built to be safe against attacks from adversarial quantum computers. Dillion notes this is not the case for many existing blockchains, which may need to update their software to become quantum-safe.
Taken together, the team’s pitch is a tempting one: a blockchain that could be both safer in a quantum world and less energy-hungry while performing proof-of-work.
Still, the transition from a promising experiment to a scalable reality won’t be simple.
Olivier Ezratty at the Quantum Energy Initiative cautioned that even if quantum computing reduces the energy cost per computation. it’s hard to make a purely economic case that the quantum approach will work at scale. In his view, the hardware itself brings a different kind of bill. “They may reduce the total energy cost. but at the price of a much larger capital expenditure. including the energy cost of manufacturing those D-Wave [quantum computers]. ” Ezratty said.
Perez-Delagado, however, sees momentum. He said he strongly believes that, given economic incentives for faster, cleaner crypto-mining, more of this technology will appear. Other companies are already pursuing quantum proof-of-work projects too, including BTQ Technologies and Quandela. Quandela builds quantum computers that use light, rather than the tiny superconducting circuits used in Advantage2.
Dillion’s end goal goes beyond a single mining experiment. He says Quip could evolve into a worldwide distributed quantum computer: connecting users to many different quantum computers so they can compete to solve different problems. in the same way Advantage2 competes with conventional machines now. That, he says, would democratize access to machines that are currently rare and expensive.
To get there, Dillion says the team is working on adding another proof-of-work problem soon and connecting quantum computers made by companies other than D-Wave.
In the end, the central tension is simple enough to feel. Quip’s preliminary results point to a potential break from crypto’s energy-heavy routine—measured in watts, not promises. But whether that advantage holds up outside the lab may depend less on who wins the blocks and more on what it costs to build and sustain the quantum hardware doing the winning.
D-Wave Advantage2 quantum computing cryptocurrency mining proof of work blockchain Postquant Labs Quip energy efficiency quantum-safe blockchain Quantum Energy Initiative BTQ Technologies Quandela