Ethereum Foundation Plans to Complete Quantum-Safe Upgrade by 2029

Odaily News The Ethereum Foundation released a new roadmap on Tuesday, outlining how the development team is preparing for the threat of quantum computing. The Foundation's quantum team anticipates that a series of initial network upgrades can be completed by 2029, primarily involving four key hard forks.

The Foundation stated that quantum computing will ultimately break the public-key cryptography that protects ownership, authentication, and consensus in all digital systems, but this threat is not expected to arrive immediately. Researchers from the Foundation's quantum team estimate that quantum computing with cryptography-relevant capabilities is still 8 to 12 years away.

Among the four hard forks, the "I" fork will provide quantum-safe public keys for network validators, and the "J" fork will reduce the gas cost for verifying quantum-safe signatures. These two upgrades have been included in the considerations for the Hegota fork expected later this year. The "L" fork will compress the network state representation into zero-knowledge proofs, while the "M" fork will protect Layer 2 networks from quantum threats.

Researchers indicated that Layer 1 protocol upgrades can be completed by 2029, while a full execution layer migration will require several additional years beyond that. The Ethereum Foundation established a dedicated quantum team in January of this year, and a developer testnet began testing some quantum functionalities in March.