The Ethereum Foundation has announced post-quantum security (PQ) as one of its main strategic priorities and has formed a specialized team of developers.
The group will be led by engineer-cryptographer EF Thomas Koratger with the support of a specialist from the leanVM team known as Emile, researcher Justin Drake reported.
«Our journey began in 2019 with the presentation of Eth3.0 Quantum Security at StarkWare Sessions. Starting in 2024, PQ takes center stage in the leanEthereum concept. The pace of engineering breakthroughs in PQ since then has been simply phenomenal. But now it's 2026, and deadlines are accelerating,» he wrote.
Drake called leanVM the 'cornerstone' of Ethereum's post-quantum strategy. The virtual machine is optimized for using zero-knowledge proofs and quantum-resistant signatures based on hashing.
The transition is accelerating
In November 2025, co-founder $ETH Vitalik Buterin warned that the underlying elliptic cryptography of the cryptocurrency could become vulnerable by 2028.
According to Drake, the task of the blockchain project is to transition to quantum-resistant technologies in the near future without downtime and loss of funds. He described a number of steps planned or already implemented in this direction:
The consensus client teams Lighthouse and Grandine have already implemented post-quantum networks for developers. A similar solution is expected soon from Prysm;
EF is launching a prize of $1 million for improving the reliability of the hash function. An equivalent amount has been allocated for rewards under another PQ initiative called Proximity Prize;
Next month, weekly sessions dedicated to PQ for developers will begin under the guidance of Antonio Sanso. The sections will focus on user-oriented security, including account abstraction and signature aggregation using leanVM.
In October, EF will hold a three-day themed seminar in Cambridge, and at the end of March — a separate session before the EthCC conference in Cannes.
And what about bitcoin?
The community of the first cryptocurrency acknowledges the quantum risk for the blockchain. However, the temporal forecasts vary greatly.
Famous cryptopunk and CEO of Blockstream Adam Back is confident that the risk of hacking will not become real for another 20-40 years. A number of experts, such as analyst Willy Woo and the team behind the Quantum Doomsday Clock project, are not so optimistic. They allow for a range of 2028-2030.
Partner at Castle Island Ventures Nick Carter has criticized bitcoin developers for ignoring the threat of quantum computing. In his opinion, the risk is already negatively affecting the dynamics of digital gold prices. This claim was disputed by the founder and lead analyst at Checkonchain, James Chek.
According to Back, developers are conducting relevant research. However, Chek believes that the main problem will not be the creation but the implementation of the protection mechanism — the bitcoin community is extremely slow in reaching consensus on changes to the protocol.
Commercial Director of Naoris Protocol Youssef El Maddarsi, in a column for Cointelegraph, reminded that even a 'minor' update like Taproot required lengthy discussions and approvals.
Another important issue he mentioned was the potential transition to quantum-resistant technologies, which will require a fundamental overhaul of the signature mechanisms in the protocol. According to researchers from Kent University, such a significant upgrade will cost 75-300 days of downtime. For a global financial asset with a capitalization of over $1 trillion, this seems unacceptable, emphasized Maddarsi.
Recall that in December, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson pointed to the risk of blockchain performance dropping by tens of times when migrating to quantum-resistant solutions.
