Ethereum Foundation Project Lead Says Ethereum Can Prepare Accounts for Post-Quantum Era Without Hard Fork

Ethereum Foundation privacy project Kohaku lead Nico said Ethereum can begin account-level preparations for a post-quantum era without waiting for a protocol-layer hard fork upgrade. According to Foresight News, Nico said the work can be implemented under the current technical framework at a cost of $0.07. Nico said a review has been completed with Fable, and additional auditing work is expected to begin soon. He added that the proposal includes a formal verification proof developed with the Verity framework for users interested in the Lean programming language. The research was reviewed by the Ethereum Foundation cryptography team, Vitalik Buterin, and Justin Drake, among others, Nico said. He said the expected timeline for quantum computers to break ECDSA has moved earlier, increasing the urgency of deploying post-quantum signature schemes. Nico said SPHINCS- could serve as a transitional option while waiting for protocol-layer aggregation solutions to be implemented.