ETH Quantum Roadmap

Ethereum - the second highest marketcap as of today is planning to roll out quantum-resistance in the future. The challenge facing Ethereum developers is that the current proof-of-stake protocol relies upon a very efficient signature scheme known as BLS to aggregate votes on valid blocks. This signature scheme is broken by quantum computers, but the quantum resistant alternatives are not as efficient1.

Future-proofing Ethereum The “KZG” commitment schemes used in several places across Ethereum to generate cryptographic secrets are known to be quantum-vulnerable. Currently, this is circumvented using “trusted setups” where many users generate randomness that cannot be reverse-engineered by a quantum computer. However, the ideal solution would simply be to incorporate quantum safe cryptography instead. There are two leading approaches that could become efficient replacements for the BLS scheme: STARK-based and lattice-based signing. These are still being researched and prototyped.

What are STARKS?

TODO

  1. https://ethereum.org/de/roadmap/future-proofing/ ↩︎

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