Antonio Sanso, a cryptography researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, is confident that the blockchain will be quantum sheltered long before a possible quantum attack.
“As the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and the Ethereum community, we are working intensively on this topic,” Cointelegraph said.
“The research part is probably the part that has already been thought out. We are starting with the execution phase. We are really confident that we will meet the schedule and deadline.”
EF has identified post-quantum (PQ) security as a top strategic priority. On January 24, he announced the formation of the Post Quantum team, led by Thomas Coratger. Since February 4, Sanso has been running his fresh biweekly All Core Devs calling for post-quantum security.
This is a huge undertaking. He explained that Ethereum’s execution, consensus and data availability layers need modernization.
“When we talk about a post-quantum solution, we’re not talking about one part – there are many different large macro areas of Ethereum that need to be migrated,” he said.
“It’s good that we have been working on this for many months, if not years. So we have a clear plan that we will probably implement in the coming years.”
One fifth of the way to the finish line
Asked to estimate how far work has progressed so far, Sanso said progress on solutions for different layers is at different rates, “so it’s not one percent for all three. But overall, probably 20 percent.”
The fresh two-week call will discuss the benefits and trade-offs of different approaches. Multi-client post-quantum development networks are already live, and a PQ roadmap will soon be released that aims for what EF researcher Justin Drake calls “full transformation in the coming years with zero wasted funds and zero downtime.”
Making Ethereum quantum resilient is just one part of a complete overhaul of the entire blockchain under Lean Ethereum. The goal is to make Ethereum faster, simpler, and more decentralized using zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, while making it resistant to quantum attacks.
Comparison with Bitcoin
Enthusiasm for Ethereum’s quantum proofing stands in stark contrast to Bitcoin, where leaders from Adam Back to Michael Saylor have downplayed the need for change, pointing to estimates that suggest a quantum computer could arrive years or decades away.
This is true, but with reservations. At DevConnect in Buenos Aires, co-founder Vitalik Buterin noted that the median prediction for a quantum computer to break cryptography was 2040, but there was still a 20% chance it would happen by 2030.
But as it happens, fewer Bitcoins (BTC) are actually vulnerable to quantum attacks, with estimates indicating that around 6 million BTC are currently at risk, mostly at older addresses with exposed public keys.
Related: Bitcoin is not 20 years elderly because the quantum threat already exists
However, the expansive majority of Ethereum is vulnerable to attacks – as is all of Solana. The proposed fixes for Bitcoin are also simpler, even if much larger PQ signatures remain a massive problem.
“From a technical point of view, migration is simpler,” Sanso explained. “But they’re probably going to have a problem on a human level… finding agreement on what to do.”
“Ethereum, we don’t have that problem, but… technologically we have more things to migrate,” he said. “We share the same fact that we need to change execution transaction signatures, but of the problems we have – between the execution layer, consensus and data availability – the execution layer is the easiest. So the other two are a bit more complicated.”
What will happen if quantum computers arrive sooner?
According to Sanso, the deadline for building a quantum computer is the mid-2030s. He’s waiting Lean Ethereum it is expected to be completed sometime between 2028 and 2032.
Given how suddenly gigantic language models and ZK proofs have appeared (in the latter case well ahead of estimates), it is possible that quantum computers will be able to break blockchains before they are completely completed.
You can raise the protection of your Ether (ETH) now by sending it to a fresh, unused address because the public keys will not be exposed (quantum computers work backwards to obtain private keys from public ones using Shor’s algorithm).
In the future, astute wallets using a combination of account abstraction and post-quantum signatures will protect your ETH.
“The idea is to have a new post-quantum algorithm, probably based on a mesh or hash. Basically, we will integrate it with account abstraction.”
PQ signatures are much larger
At DevConnect in November, Zknox demonstrated a post-quantum Dilithium signature hardware wallet that is compatible with existing Ethereum infrastructure.
However, post-quantum signatures are huge, and the lightest, called Falcon, is still 10 times larger than current Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) signatures.
Sanso explained that coding a networking solution in Solidity costs a fortune in gas. There is an Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) for precompilation to handle this automatically outside of the core protocol, which would speed things up and reduce costs.
The broader issue of including on-chain signatures 10 times larger than current ones will likely require a number of different measures, including the operate of ZK-STARK to reduce size.
Emergency Quantum Update
But Buterin also developed a contingency plan in March 2024 to deal with a quantum attack that includes a strenuous fork and a method for ETH owners to prove they are the legal owners of a specific address before being transferred to PQ addresses holding an equivalent balance.
Sanso said this plan is ongoing and is working on a way for ETH owners to operate ZK proofs to securely prove they have the correct seed code for the address.
“It’s something we’ve been actively working on. We hope this will be one project that showcases it either at EthCC in Cannes or at Devcon in India.”
Depending on it EIB are approved, this system may also be used as part of the planned transition to PQ signatures. Individuals could prove ownership of the address and then disable the existing portion of the ECDSA account that is vulnerable to quantum attacks.
“We have this EIP that you can turn on yourself and say, I’m going to kill the elliptic curve part of my EOAs. So you keep the same address, and the only way to move things from your address is to combine the account abstraction and this seed proof.”
“This will likely be discussed in future forums, and I think it’s heading in the right direction if you ask me.”
Sanso noted that selecting an EIP for inclusion will be a long process that will ultimately be decided by the community.
He said the first All Core Devs PQ “break room” call is scheduled for February 4, 2026.
According to Drake, the two-week sessions “focus on user security, including dedicated pre-builds, account abstraction, and long-term transaction signature aggregation using LeanVM.”
Warehouse: Bitcoin and the threat of quantum computing – Timeline and solutions (2025-2035)
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