Vitalik Buterin Explains How AI Weaken Even Quantum Resistant Crypto in 2 Years

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned on Thursday that AI-accelerated maths could weaken lattice-based cryptography, including schemes considered quantum-resistant, within two years.

He urges the crypto industry to take the risks posed by AI-accelerated math seriously and minimize exposure not just to quantum-vulnerable cryptography, but also potentially AI-vulnerable cryptography.

Vitalik Buterin Warns About AI Risks to Crypto Security

In an X post on October 8, Vitalik Buterin warns that AI mathematical advancements could undermine not only quantum-vulnerable crypto schemes like ECDSA but also lattice-based cryptography such as ML-DSA and FHE, which many view as post-quantum safe or quantum-resistant.

He challenged the common assumption that “elliptic curves broken, hashes safe, lattices safe.” He said there is a “good chance” that the concrete security of lattices will take serious hits from the next two years of AI math advancements.

Vitalik Buterin claimed RSA keys and signatures need to be nearly 400 bytes, and not 64 bytes. He argued, “What if there are skeletons in the closet like that, both for elliptic curves and lattices, that we are simply not smart enough to discover but bots soon will be?”

Ethereum Is Shifting to Hash-Based Crypto Signatures amid AI Risks

Vitalik Buterin revealed that Ethereum’s lean roadmap has focused on a “hash-only” direction rather than lattices, with signatures like WOTS and SPHINCS. He claimed hash-based methods do not have exploitable mathematical structure and are considered more resistant to AI-accelerated attacks.

For signatures and proofs, hash-only approaches are already known to work. Public key encryption is harder, he noted, because long-standing mathematical results show it cannot be built from hashes alone.

“To me that’s a very plausible world and something not at all extreme to predict. If AI will bring us 50 years of math in 2 years, then that 50 years of math may very plausibly include a “naive factoring -> GNFS” level of improvement to our ability to break lattices,” he said.

As CoinGape reported earlier, the Ethereum Foundation is targeting to make Layer-1 fully quantum-resistant by 2029. Vitalik Buterin earlier pushed back against a claim that AI-powered hacking can weaken cybersecurity.

Vitalik Buterin’s Advice on Minimizing AI Risks to Crypto Signatures

For multisigs, Ethereum co-founder claimed the ideal “safe” rule is that each signer should change their key after each operation. “You definitely still want to gather sigs offchain if possible, to minimize the number of hours between sig revealed and key no longer active,” he said.

He advised using fresh addresses wherever possible, off-chain multisig confirmations, avoiding on-chain encrypted notes for privacy, and larger parameters for any lattice-based public key encryption to prevent long-term risks.

Meanwhile, Europol urged crypto industry to begin preparing for quantum computing threats early. The agency warned that crypto wallets are the primary point of exposure to quantum attacks.  The EU’s NIS Cooperation Group urged adopting a post-quantum strategy by 2026-end.

While developers work to secure signatures and proofs against emerging mathematical threats, check out the best zero-knowledge proof projects as platforms pioneer cutting-edge cryptographic defenses.