Ethereum Can Quantum-Proof Accounts for $0.07

Nicolas Consigny, the Kohaku project lead at the Ethereum Foundation, shared a paper proposing a low-cost way to protect Ethereum accounts from future quantum threats. The method adapts SPHINCS+, the post-quantum signature standard developed by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology, into a variant called SPHINCS-.

SPHINCS- aims to cut on-chain verification costs without requiring a protocol change or precompile and is described as a bridge to leanSPHINCS, a future post-quantum signature system that would further reduce verification costs through aggregation. The proposal targets the long-term risk quantum computing poses to Ethereum's Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm and could be deployed before a dedicated hard fork.

Quantum threats have stirred the crypto community: Project Eleven awarded a prize to Giancarlo Lelli for using a quantum computer to break a 15-bit elliptic-curve key with a variant of Shor’s algorithm, while Bitcoin’s 256-bit keys remain much larger than the key Lelli cracked.

United States

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