BlockBeats News, April 22, According to a report by Decrypt, the Coinbase Quantum Computing and Blockchain Independent Advisory Committee stated on Tuesday that Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchains may face greater exposure risks to future quantum computing attacks, as the cryptography relied upon by validator signatures that secure these networks could eventually be broken by sufficiently powerful quantum computers. The report notes that PoS networks like Ethereum and Solana depend on cryptographic signatures—Ethereum validators use BLS signatures, while Solana validators and users employ Ed25519 signatures—to help the network reach consensus on blocks and maintain agreement.
The advisory committee stated: “PoS chains have exposure risks in the signature schemes used by validators to secure the network, meaning the challenges for PoS go beyond merely upgrading wallets; parts of the core consensus mechanism itself may need to be redesigned.” The report mentions recent work by Ethereum developers, including a proposal by co-founder Vitalik Buterin in February to replace BLS validator signatures, KZG commitments, and ECDSA wallet signatures with quantum-resistant alternatives. The committee also listed digital signatures used by crypto wallets as another major long-term vulnerability, estimating that about 6.9 million bitcoins fall into the category where public keys are already visible on-chain. The report asserts that current cryptocurrency systems remain secure because quantum computers capable of breaking modern cryptographic signatures do not yet exist.
