Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake said on Oct. 7 that the blockchain industry should "calmly start planning for 'bunker mode,'" arguing that wallet signatures built on ECDSA could be broken before quantum computers fully mature. In his view, the worst-case timeline is measured in months, not years.
Drake tells large holders to move funds to fresh addresses
Drake’s main recommendation was directed at asset holders, especially large and technically sophisticated ones. He said most funds should be moved to addresses that have never signed a transaction, because their public keys are still hidden behind a hash.
He added that once such an address is used to sign a transaction, any remaining funds should be moved again to a new address. Those fresh addresses can still be derived from the same seed phrase.
At the same time, Drake stressed that holders should not rush. He said, "don't hurry, and don't panic," arguing that a rushed migration could do more harm than good. In his description, moving funds to protected addresses is a straightforward precaution that does not require new cryptography or a new wallet.
He specifically named Binance, Bitbank, Robinhood, Bitfinex, and Tether as firms that could use the moment to harden their cold wallet setup. He also said wallets holding less than 50 BTC benefit in part from a "Satoshi shield"—a reference to roughly 20,000 exposed public keys associated with addresses holding 50 BTC each.
Advice for oracles and Layer 2 security councils
For roles responsible for critical signing, including oracles and L2 security councils, Drake said each signed message should use a rotated ECDSA public key, or be paired with hash-based signatures such as SPHINCS in a multisignature arrangement.
He ties the warning to recent math advances
What Drake means by a "break" is the ability to recover a private key quickly using existing hardware, such as a large GPU cluster, in about a week.
He said the timeline has moved forward because of recent breakthroughs in mathematics. Referring to results released by OpenAI a day earlier, Drake wrote that "mathematical superintelligence has arrived" and mentioned the overturning of long-standing assumptions including the n log(n) bound for integer multiplication and the 3SUM conjecture.
Drake argued that elliptic curves carry rich mathematical structure and therefore "feel especially vulnerable" in the face of superintelligence, while hash functions are intentionally designed to minimize algebraic structure.
He also said that among OpenAI’s 722 published mathematical results, the share involving cryptographic breakthroughs was notably low. Drake added that he had personally seen the U.S. government review academic quantum cryptanalysis research.
Ethereum roadmap may speed up its shift to hash-based cryptography
Drake said a safe exit from "bunker mode" will require cryptography that can resist AI. His preference is to fully back hash-based cryptography and stay away from elliptic curves, lattice cryptography, or homomorphic cryptography—systems he described as relying on mathematical structure.
According to Drake, Ethereum’s roadmap had already leaned on hash-based cryptography as a response to quantum threats. He now believes the timeline should be reviewed and accelerated because of what he called mathematical superintelligence, and said he will push for the "maximum acceleration of defense."
He also said he will hold an in-person Q&A for institutional investors in London next month.
Europol report raised a similar issue
A Europol report covered by Chain News on Oct. 7 discussed the same risk facing wallets whose public keys have already been exposed. The report said the threat from quantum computers targets the private keys of crypto wallets, not the blockchain itself.