Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned that AI-driven mathematical breakthroughs could weaken lattice-based cryptography within two years. They could also break the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) behind Bitcoin and ETH wallets sooner than expected.
Buterin did not urge panic, however, and said nobody should rush to move funds today. He was replying to Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, who wants the industry to plan for a “bunker mode.”
Why Are Lattices Suddenly in Doubt?
Buterin said most people have assumed elliptic curves are vulnerable while hashes and lattices stay safe. He now questions the lattice half of that view.
Lattice math supports the Module-Lattice-Based Digital Signature Algorithm (ML-DSA), a signature standard built to resist quantum computers. It also powers Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which computes on encrypted data.
Buterin pointed to factoring, where the number field sieve shortcut forced encryption keys to grow over decades. If AI delivers 50 years of math in two years, he argued, lattices could face a similar hit.
Hashes are designed without exploitable structure, which Buterin sees as a safer bet than curves or lattices. Ethereum’s Lean roadmap, its long-term upgrade plan, has shifted toward hash-only designs for a year. Its signatures use hash-based schemes such as SPHINCS and WOTS.
To put it plainly: Some of today’s newest security tools rely on lattices, a type of math puzzle that quantum computers struggle to solve. Buterin’s worry is that AI could find a shortcut to those puzzles, much as researchers once found shortcuts that forced older encryption keys to grow. Hashes, which scramble data into fixed codes with no pattern to exploit, look safer to him. That is why Ethereum’s roadmap is moving toward hash-based signatures.
What About Bitcoin?
Bitcoin also relies on elliptic curve signatures, so Drake’s warning applies there too. He said ECDSA could break within months in the worst case.
Drake pointed to Project11’s “risq list,” a tracker of Bitcoin public keys already exposed onchain. He said wallets holding under 50 BTC get partial cover from “Satoshi’s shield.”
That shield refers to roughly 20,000 exposed addresses tied to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Each holds 50 BTC.
Drake also said Binance, Bitbank, Robinhood, Bitfinex, and Tether have an opportunity to harden their offline cold storage.
What Should Holders Do Now?
Buterin advised keeping funds in addresses that have never sent a transaction, if that is easy to do. He cautioned that he has personally lost more money to botched migrations than to every hack combined.
For multisig wallets, which require several approvals, he favors offchain confirmations. If ECDSA falls, such a wallet would degrade to a single signer, the party collecting signatures, instead of becoming open to anyone.
For privacy protocols, he strongly favors sending encrypted notes offchain through a third-party channel rather than posting them onchain. Drake added that Ethereum’s roadmap timelines must be revisited and accelerated.
The stakes reach past blockchains. Public-key encryption cannot rely on hashes alone, so secure messaging, virtual private networks, and website access depend on structured math. For anything meant to last, Buterin suggests multiplying key sizes by 10.
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