Paper 2025/325

On Quantum Money and Evasive Obfuscation

Mark Zhandry, NTT Research
Abstract

We show a black box barrier against constructing public key quantum money from obfuscation for evasive functions. As current post-quantum obfuscators based on standard assumptions are all evasive, this shows a fundamental barrier to achieving public key quantum money from standard tools. Our impossibility applies to black box schemes where (1) obfuscation queries made by the mint are classical, and (2) the verifier only makes (possibly quantum) evaluation queries, but no obfuscation queries. This class seems to capture any natural method of using obfuscation to build quantum money.

Metadata
Available format(s)
PDF
Category
Foundations
Publication info
A major revision of an IACR publication in EUROCRYPT 2025
Contact author(s)
mzhandry @ gmail com
History
2025-02-24: approved
2025-02-22: received
See all versions
Short URL
https://ia.cr/2025/325
License
Creative Commons Attribution
CC BY

BibTeX

@misc{cryptoeprint:2025/325,
      author = {Mark Zhandry},
      title = {On Quantum Money and Evasive Obfuscation},
      howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2025/325},
      year = {2025},
      url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/325}
}
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