JPMorgan Chase, Toshiba, and Ciena Demonstrate a QKD Protected Blockchain Application

A research team from JP Morgan Chase, Toshiba, and Ciena have demonstrated a quantum protected blockchain application over a 70 kilometer fiber optic cable. The demonstration was able to multiplex one QKD (Quantum Key Distribution) channel, two 800 gigabit/second channels (Gbps), and eight 100 gigabit/second channels over a single fiberoptic cable using DWDM (Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing) technology. The QKD channel was used to supply up to 258 AES-256 keys at a refresh rate of 1 key/second for the AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) algorithm and the 800 Gbps and 100 Gbps channels were used to transmit the encrypted data using the AES keys supplied by the QKD channel. Additional tests were performed with an extended distance of 100 km, although the Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER) increased significantly and the secret key rate decreased significantly at the longer distance. To learn more about this demonstration, you can view a news announcement provided by JP Morgan Chase here and view a technical paper which describes this experiment in much more detail here.

February 19, 2022