Two Ethereum researchers warn that artificial intelligence advances could break the signature system used by crypto wallets within months. Justin Drake posted on X urging the industry to prepare a bunker mode for this potential threat. He suggests moving funds to addresses that have never signed a transaction because signing reveals the public key. An attacker could theoretically use this key to derive the private key and steal the funds. As long as only the public key hash is visible, the funds remain protected because the key cannot be recovered from that hash.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin agreed in a reply but warned against acting too fast. He noted he has lost more money to botched migrations than to hacks. Buterin argues for an architecture that relies as much as possible on hash functions alone. He believes even lattice-based schemes, often considered quantum-safe, could be weakened by AI advances. So far, no one has actually broken the current ECDSA signature scheme in practice.
* Drake recommends moving funds to addresses that have never signed a transaction
* Buterin warns that bad migrations have cost more than successful hacks
* The current ECDSA signature scheme remains unbroken in practice
