AI math breakthroughs have Ethereum researchers debating how fast wallet security could collapse
Ethereum researchers warn AI math advances could someday break wallet ECDSA, though nobody has done so.
Ethereum researcher Justin Drake urged the industry to prepare a "bunker mode," moving funds to addresses that have never signed, because a signature exposes the public key. Vitalik Buterin agreed the long-term risk is real but cautioned against hasty migrations, saying he has lost more to botched moves than to hacks. Buterin prefers designs that rely on hash functions, arguing even lattice schemes often called quantum-safe could weaken if AI-assisted math advances. No one has broken the current ECDSA wallet signature scheme in practice.
- Justin Drake urged a bunker mode using never-signed wallet addresses.
- Signing reveals a public key that could theoretically expose the private key.
- Vitalik Buterin warned rushed migrations have cost him more than hacks.
- He favors hash-only designs; no practical ECDSA break is known.
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Two leading Ethereum researchers warn that AI-assisted math could, in the worst case, break the signature system used by crypto wallets within months. Justin Drake called on the blockchain industry in a post on X to prepare a "bunker mode."
He recommends moving funds to addresses that have never signed a transaction. Signing reveals the public key, which an attacker could theoretically use to derive the private key and steal the funds. As long as only the public key's hash is visible, the funds remain protected because the key cannot be recovered from that hash.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin agreed in a reply on X but warned against acting too fast. He said he's lost more money to botched migrations than to hacks. Long-term, Buterin argues for an architecture that relies as much as possible on hash functions alone, since even lattice-based schemes, often considered quantum-safe, could be weakened by advances in AI.
So far, no one has actually broken the current ECDSA signature scheme in practice.
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