Ethereum Researcher Warns AI Could Crack Crypto Before Q-Day

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has urged the industry to prepare for “bunker mode,” recommending users gradually move assets to fresh addresses amid concerns that advances in artificial intelligence could undermine the cryptography used in today’s blockchains.

In an X post on Wednesday, Drake said recent advances in AI, particularly OpenAI’s recent release of mathematical breakthroughs, suggest AI could eventually make it possible to break the elliptic curve digital signature algorithm (ECDSA) used to secure cryptocurrency wallets.

“It is now reasonable to brace for the possibility that ECDSA breaks before qday, in the worst case in months not years,” said Drake. 

The warning raises the prospect that AI could enable attackers to recover private keys from exposed public keys sooner than anticipated, before sufficiently powerful quantum computers become available. 

Mathematical superintelligence

“Recent days have been humbling for human mathematical intuition. Long-held, unquestioned hypotheses have fallen,” said Drake. 

On Tuesday, OpenAI released hundreds of new mathematical findings across a variety of topics such as algebra, theoretical computer science and mathematical logic.

Last month the company said it used a team of 10,000 autonomous AI agents working in parallel to solve the Navier-Stokes equation, one of the most famous and difficult unsolved problems in mathematics and physics, in just 88 hours. 

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Drake said elliptic curves could be especially vulnerable to superintelligence. 

“Curves carry rich structure, with room for fancy tricks like Schoof, Frobenius, pairings. (By contrast, hashes are designed to minimize algebraic structure.)” he said. 

Controlled migration to fresh addresses 

“My personal recommendation is to set in motion a controlled mass migration of assets to fresh addresses,” said Drake.

He said large and sophisticated crypto holders should be the first to move their funds to new addresses. He also recommended moving any remaining funds to a new address after signing a transaction.

The rationale is that, for these address types, a fresh address conceals the public key behind a cryptographic hash, reducing exposure to attacks that require knowledge of the public key.

Signing a transaction can reveal that public key, which is why Drake recommends moving the remaining balance afterward. 

Drake, however, stressed that any migration should be gradual and carefully managed, warning that “a rushed migration would do more harm than good.”

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