Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake, long known for warning that quantum computers could eventually crack the cryptography behind digital assets, now says artificial intelligence may get there first.
In a Wednesday post on X, Drake called on the blockchain industry to "calmly begin planning for 'bunker mode.'" His preferred response is a controlled, large-scale migration of funds to fresh addresses that have never signed a transaction, so their public keys remain hidden behind a hash.
Focus falls on ECDSA
The warning centers on ECDSA, the signature scheme used by Bitcoin and Ethereum to prove a transaction was authorized by the correct private key. Once 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, recover the private key, and empty the wallet.
Drake said it is now reasonable to prepare for ECDSA to fail before Q-Day, the point when quantum computers become powerful enough to break current encryption. In his words, the worst-case timeline could be "months not years."
He defined a break as the ability to recover a private key in about a week using available hardware, including a large GPU cluster.
AI math progress seen as a warning sign
Drake pointed to a burst of AI-driven mathematical work as a sign that long-standing assumptions may no longer hold. He specifically cited 722 results published by OpenAI on Tuesday.
"Elliptic curves feel especially vulnerable to superintelligence," he wrote. His argument is that elliptic curves have a rich mathematical structure that may leave room for clever attacks, while hash functions are designed to resist that kind of approach.
No call for panic, but a push to prepare
Drake said holders should not rush or panic. Moving assets, he noted, does not require new cryptography or new wallets.
He also urged Binance, Bitbank, Robinhood, Bitfinex, and Tether to strengthen their cold storage practices.
Wallets holding less than 50 BTC may have some protection from what Drake called "Satoshi's shield." He said roughly 20,000 exposed addresses linked to Bitcoin's creator, each holding 50 BTC, would likely be targeted first.
Security concerns have intensified
The comments mark a sharper turn in concerns over whether crypto security assumptions could fail.
In March, after a Google paper suggested quantum computers might break crypto's cryptography sooner than expected, Drake put the probability of Q-Day arriving by 2032 at 10% or higher.
Ethereum has already formed a post-quantum team
Earlier this year, the Ethereum Foundation created a dedicated post-quantum team. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin has also outlined plans to move the network toward quantum-resistant cryptography.
Drake said Ethereum's roadmap toward hash-based cryptography should now move faster. "I'll be pushing for maximum defensive acceleration," he wrote.