Detecting Phishing in Ethereum Networks using Quantum Machine Learning

Abstract

This article explores the potential of Quantum Machine Learning (QML), specifically assessing a Quantum Support Vector Machine (QSVM) and a Variational Quantum Classifier (VQC) for detecting anomalies in real-world financial transaction data. While these QML methods outperform statistical methods, they fall short of cutting-edge deep learning techniques. To bridge this gap, we propose a hybrid quantum-classical ensemble framework that leverages the strengths of both domains. We demonstrate its effectiveness in detecting phishing in Ethereum transaction networks by combining complementary algorithms. The QSVM, whether used individually or in an ensemble, consistently delivered the lowest false negatives and higher recall rates, that are crucial for anomaly detection. To enhance individual models, we encoded the data using novel cascaded Quantum Random Access Coding (QRAC) schemes and compared it with the popular encoding ZZ feature map on both simulators and the IBM Heron quantum processor. For both QSVM and VQC, we consistently observed improvements (13% for QRAC-VQC and 3% for QRAC-QSVM) of QRAC over the ZZ feature map. Notably, certain QML algorithms exhibit remarkable resilience on the IBM Heron quantum processor, approaching simulator-level performance on devices with high quantum volume. This observation underscores the promise of QML despite hardware limitations.