The Ethereum Foundation plans to transition to post-quantum cryptography by the end of 2028.

Ethereum Foundation (EF) researcher Justin Drake announced that the network is accelerating its transition to post-quantum cryptography. According to him, advances in quantum computing and artificial intelligence are creating new risks for the cryptographic mechanisms Ethereum relies on.

Drake noted that in recent months the team has recorded a significant increase in the number of vulnerabilities discovered with the help of AI. Since March, Ethereum client developers have been sent 895 potential issues, 500 of which were confirmed as real vulnerabilities.

According to the researcher, Ethereum has an advantage thanks to client diversity, and EF’s security team has expanded its headcount in recent weeks and months and brought in researchers who specialize in working with AI.

Developers Warned of Accelerating Quantum Threats

Drake believes the timeline for the emergence of quantum computers capable of breaking modern cryptography could shrink. He cited an estimate from the head of one major quantum company who, he said, expects with 99% confidence that Q-Day — the moment when quantum computers will be able to break the relevant cryptographic mechanisms — will arrive as early as 2029.

The researcher set his own baseline estimate at 2032, but puts the probability of Q-Day arriving by 2029 at 10%.

Drake also highlighted the development of neutral-atom quantum systems, which he called one of the main short-term threats to cryptography due to their scaling potential.

According to him, progress is happening across multiple layers of quantum technology — from hardware and error correction to algorithms. As an example, he pointed to work on Shor’s algorithm, which can be used to break elliptic-curve cryptography.

Drake said a group of around 100 enthusiasts working with the ecdsa.fail project has cut the estimated number of required qubits by 30% compared with a Google study published in March. He said the algorithm’s runtime has also been reduced threefold, and new work he mentioned in the talk promises to cut it by another order of magnitude — from minutes to seconds.

The researcher also flagged risks tied to the development of mathematical superintelligence. In his view, AI could find counterexamples to mathematical conjectures that have long been considered correct. This raises additional questions about the reliability of Ethereum’s cryptographic mechanisms.

He also suggested that government bodies could restrict the publication of research results on cryptographic vulnerabilities. At the same time, the report presented these claims as the researcher’s own assessments.

Mission 2028 Timeline: Transition to Post-Quantum Protection

According to Drake, the team has moved up the timeline for the transition to post-quantum cryptography. Developers now want to secure all three layers of Ethereum before the JAR fork, whereas the relevant changes were previously planned for a later stage — the LAR fork.

The plan outlines three main tracks:

• execution layer (EL): transition to post-quantum transactions
• consensus layer (CL): rollout of post-quantum attestations
• data layer (DL): transition to post-quantum data sampling.

The main tool for implementing these changes will be leanVM. According to the presenters, the project recently achieved full end-to-end formal verification.

As part of Mission 2028, the team set two key milestones: the launch of the Glamsterdam fork on mainnet in January 2027, and the completion of the transition to post-quantum and post-AI cryptography by December 2028. Developers plan to use the 24 months after Glamsterdam to roll out the changes across three hard forks.

Hash-Based Cryptography and Formal Verification

The second speaker, Kev, explained that the core tools for the transition will be hash-based cryptography and formal verification. He said the team considered Poseidon2 for performance, but as proof systems evolved, it shifted toward classical hash functions. The current primary option is SHA-3 / Keccak, which has more than ten years of cryptanalysis behind it.

Developers plan to replace ECDSA with leanSphincs at the execution layer, BLS with leanXMSS at the consensus layer, and KZG with leanDA at the data layer. The team is also working on leanPCS — a post-quantum polynomial commitment scheme intended to help move from Groth16 and Plonk to post-quantum STARK proofs.

Changes for Validators and Users

Developers urged validators to check legacy 0x00 withdrawal credentials, which, according to the speakers, are planned to be deprecated, and to join the work on the PQ Validator Registry.

App developers are advised to check their systems for hard dependencies on ECDSA. Wallets should proactively review support for Frame Transactions — a mechanism expected to become a key part of post-quantum protection at the execution layer.

According to Drake’s estimate, 72% of ETH is held by accounts that have signed at least one transaction, meaning their public keys have been exposed. For users who want to reduce this risk right now, he suggested moving Ethereum to a new account that has not yet signed any transactions. In that case, the blockchain will show the address hash rather than the raw public key.

Another option is to use Frame Transactions with a smart contract that verifies leanSphincs signatures. According to the speakers, this can provide post-quantum protection already today, but it will be more expensive until leanVM is integrated directly into the protocol.

The developers also urged the community to provide feedback on leanSphincs parameters and test it on the Daugi network.

As a reminder, earlier Stacks founder Muneeb Ali said that the quantum threat is already limiting bitcoin’s growth.