Ethereum Researcher Says AI May Break Encryption Before Quantum Does

In brief

• Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake called on the industry to plan for "bunker mode" by gradually moving funds to addresses whose public keys haven't been exposed.
• He said ECDSA, the signature scheme behind Bitcoin and Ethereum, could break before Q-Day, in the worst case "in months not years," citing rapid AI-driven math advances.
• Drake urged holders not to panic or rush, and said he'll push to accelerate Ethereum's shift to hash-based cryptography.

Justin Drake has spent years warning that quantum computers could one day crack crypto's cryptography. Now the Ethereum Foundation researcher says artificial intelligence might get there first.

"Today I call upon the blockchain industry to calmly begin planning for 'bunker mode,'" Drake wrote on X on Wednesday. His recommendation is a controlled, mass migration of funds to fresh addresses that have never signed a transaction, which keep their public keys hidden behind a hash.

The concern centers on ECDSA, the signature scheme Bitcoin and Ethereum use to prove a transaction was authorized by the right private key. When a wallet signs a transaction, its public key becomes visible on-chain. If ECDSA were broken, an attacker could work backward from that public key to the private key and drain the wallet.