> By replacing classical machines with quantum systems for mining, it is possible to significantly reduce the energy consumption and environmental impact traditionally associated with blockchain mining<p>I don't think that's even theoretically true.<p>The amount of energy miners burn is driven primarily by one criteria: how much energy they can afford to burn. And since blockchain is a competition, miners will burn as much as they can afford to.<p>So let's say we're environmentally conscious people and designed a blockchain hash algorithm that's 1000x more efficient and got everyone in the world to switch to it. Would that save us 1000x more energy? No, we'll still burn the same amount of energy.<p>Another criticism: I fail to see why we'd need to "require" quantum computers for the blockchain. In this theoretical era where quantum computers are commoditized enough for everyone to have one, miners would already be incentivized to use a quantum computer, simply because they'd make more profit using a quantum computer than using a classical computer.