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Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake calls on the industry to prepare for “bunker mode”, and gradually transfer funds to addresses whose public keys have not yet been exposed.
He stated that as the signature scheme behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, ECDSA, it may be cracked before Q-Day; in the worst-case scenario, this could happen "within a few months rather than years," due to the rapid progress in mathematics driven by artificial intelligence.
Drake also urges holders not to panic or act rashly, and states that he will push for Ethereum to accelerate its transition to hash-based cryptography.
Justin Drake has been warning for many years that quantum computers may one day be able to crack the cryptography of cryptocurrencies. Now, this researcher from the Ethereum Foundation says that artificial intelligence might accomplish this first.
The core of the issue lies in ECDSA, which is the signature scheme used by Bitcoin and Ethereum to prove whether a transaction is authorized by the correct private key. When a wallet signs a transaction, its public key is made public on the blockchain. If ECDSA is cracked, attackers can deduce the private key from the public key and transfer the assets in the wallet.
Drake indicates that there is now a reason to prepare for the possibility that ECDSA will be cracked before Q-Day. Q-Day refers to the moment when quantum computers become powerful enough to crack today's encryption technologies. He said that in the worst-case scenario, this could happen "in a few months rather than years." By "cracking," he means being able to recover the private key within about a week, with the help of available hardware such as large GPU clusters.
He mentioned a wave of mathematical progress driven by artificial intelligence, including 722 results published on Tuesday by OpenAI, and believed that this indicates that long-held assumptions are being challenged. He wrote, "Elliptic curves are particularly vulnerable in the face of superintelligence." He argued that the rich mathematical structure of elliptic curves leaves room for clever attacks, while hash functions are designed to withstand such attacks.
Drake emphasizes that holders should not act hastily or panically, as transferring assets does not require new cryptography or new wallets. He also urges Binance, Bitbank, Robinhood, Bitfinex, and Tether to strengthen the security of their cold storage. At the same time, he states that wallets holding less than 50 BTC enjoy a partial protection from what he calls "Satoshi Nakamoto's Shield": approximately 20,000 exposed addresses related to the Bitcoin founder, each holding 50 BTC, which may be targeted first in any attacks.
This warning marks a clear escalation of concerns in the market regarding the potential cracking of encryption security. In March of this year, after a paper by Google suggested that quantum computers might crack cryptocurrency cryptography earlier than expected, Drake raised the probability of Q-Day arriving by 2032 to 10% or higher.
Earlier this year, the Ethereum Foundation established a dedicated post-quantum team, and co-founder Vitalik Buterin also proposed a plan to migrate the network to quantum-resistant cryptography.
Drake indicates that Ethereum's roadmap towards hash-based cryptography should now be accelerated. "I will push for the maximum acceleration of defenses," he wrote.
