Excited to share VeriQloud’s latest research — now live on arXiv!
Quantum networks today are largely single-purpose: built for QKD, used for QKD. But what if the same hardware could do much more?
Our new paper, “Toward multi-purpose quantum communication networks: from theory to protocol implementation”, takes a concrete step in that direction. On VeriQloud’s open-source Qline hardware, we implemented two quantum protocols beyond QKD — quantum oblivious transfer and quantum tokens — without changing a single photonic component.
Here’s why this matters:
Quantum Oblivious Transfer is the foundational primitive for secure multiparty computation. We achieved a full-stack secure implementation, running at ~1 OT per 6 minutes — a first on real QKD hardware.
Quantum Tokens are quantum money without quantum memory. While Qline’s current detection efficiency prevents fully secure token generation, our proof-of-principle run and bottleneck analysis give a clear roadmap for what’s needed next.
The methodology is the contribution. We built a layered software stack — including a hardware emulator (hwsim) that reproduces Qline’s behavior exactly — so that protocols validated in simulation deploy to real hardware without modification. This dramatically lowers the barrier to implementing new quantum communication applications.
The bigger picture: QKD networks are maturing. The infrastructure is there. The question is no longer can we build it — it’s what else can we run on it, and who will use it. This paper is our answer.
Read the paperAll simulations are fully reproducible. Try them yourself with our open tutorial.