Quantum Proof of Work with Parametrized Quantum Circuits

Despite all the progress in quantum technologies over the last decade, there is still a dearth of practical applications for quantum computers with a small number of noisy qubits. The effort to show quantum supremacy has been largely focused on demonstrating computations that cannot be accomplished on a classical computer at all, a difficult and controversial target. Quantum advantage (a speedup over classical computers) is a more practical milestone for today's modest quantum processors. In this work, we proposed a scheme for quantum-computer compatible proof of work (cryptographic mechanism used in Bitcoin mining) and verified it on a 4-qubit superconducting quantum node.