Leading venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Crypto has published an analysis downplaying the immediate threat quantum computing poses to major blockchain networks. According to the report, the widespread fear of a near-term quantum attack breaking current cryptographic standards is largely exaggerated.
The firm’s research, highlighted by PANews, indicates that the probability of a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer emerging before 2030 is extremely low. It further explains that many core systems, including prevalent digital signature schemes and zero-knowledge proofs like zkSNARKs, are not trivially vulnerable to a "collect now, decrypt later" quantum attack model.
a16z warns that a premature, rushed transition to post-quantum cryptography could itself introduce significant risks, including performance degradation, engineering complexity, and new, untested security flaws. The firm contends that blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum face more pressing and immediate challenges, such as protocol upgrade complexity, governance hurdles, and vulnerabilities in smart contract or implementation-layer code.
The advisory concludes that developer resources are better allocated toward mitigating these current threats through enhanced audits, fuzz testing, and formal verification, while prudently planning—but not urgently executing—a future transition to quantum-resistant algorithms based on realistic threat timelines. $BTC $ETH $BNB #ETHMarketWatch #MWAM_Crypto
