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Ethereum Researcher Says AI May Break Encryption Before Quantum Does
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Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake warned Wednesday that artificial intelligence may break crypto's core encryption before quantum computers do. In a post on X, he urged the blockchain industry to calmly plan for "bunker mode." His proposal calls for a controlled migration of funds to fresh addresses whose public keys remain hidden behind a hash.
The threat centers on ECDSA, the signature scheme used by Bitcoin and Ethereum. When a wallet signs, its public key becomes visible on-chain. If ECDSA is broken, an attacker could work backward from that public key to the private key and drain the wallet. Drake said preparing for ECDSA to break before Q-Day is now reasonable, in the worst case "in months not years."
He defined "break" as recovering a private key in about a week on available hardware, such as a large GPU cluster. Drake cited 722 results OpenAI published Tuesday as evidence that long-held assumptions are falling. He argued elliptic curves feel especially vulnerable to superintelligence.
Drake stressed that holders should not panic or rush. Moving assets requires no new cryptography or wallets, he noted. He urged Binance, Bitbank, Robinhood, Bitfinex, and Tether to harden their cold storage. Wallets holding less than 50 BTC have partial cover from "Satoshi's shield": roughly 20,000 exposed addresses tied to Bitcoin's creator, each holding 50 BTC, which would likely be targeted first.
The warning escalates anxiety over crypto's security. In March, after a Google paper suggested quantum computers could break cryptography sooner than expected, Drake put the odds of Q-Day by 2032 at 10% or more. The Ethereum Foundation formed a dedicated post-quantum team earlier this year. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin has laid out plans to move the network toward quantum-resistant cryptography.
Drake said Ethereum's roadmap toward hash-based cryptography should now be accelerated. "I'll be pushing for maximum defensive acceleration," he wrote. His call reflects growing concern that AI, not quantum computing, may be the first to crack ECDSA. The industry is now watching whether exchanges and wallet providers act on his advice.
