Drake and Buterin Urge the Crypto Industry to Prepare for AI-Driven Private Key Hacks

• Justin Drake urged the crypto industry to prepare for a scenario in which artificial intelligence accelerates the search for ways to break ECDSA.
• He recommended that large holders move assets to addresses that have not yet signed transactions, but urged against a rushed migration.
• Vitalik Buterin backed a cautious approach and said Ethereum should minimize reliance on cryptography based on structured mathematical assumptions.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake urged the crypto industry to begin preparing for a potential scenario in which artificial intelligence significantly speeds up the search for ways to break modern cryptography. According to him, ECDSA could become vulnerable not because of the emergence of quantum computers, but due to mathematical breakthroughs accelerated by AI.

Drake suggested that, in the worst-case scenario, recovering a private key from a public key could become possible in months rather than years. At the same time, he stressed that this is a projected risk, not a claim that ECDSA has already been broken.

Drake urged a move to “fresh” addresses

As a preventive measure, the researcher suggested that large holders gradually move assets to addresses that have not yet been used to sign transactions. This makes it possible to keep the public key hidden behind the address hash until the first signature.

After using such an address, Drake recommends moving the remaining funds to a new one. He advises paying particular attention to large cold storage setups and systemically important signers, including oracles and security councils for L2 networks.

At the same time, the researcher urged against rushing the migration. According to him, mistakes during mass asset transfers could do more harm than the potential cryptographic threat.

Drake also proposed accelerating Ethereum’s transition to hash-based cryptography. He believes such constructions are potentially less vulnerable to future mathematical breakthroughs than schemes that rely on elliptic curves, lattices, or other structured mathematical objects.

Buterin urged people not to panic

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said he does not recommend that users rush to move funds to new wallets. At the same time, he agreed that risks to cryptography from AI-accelerated mathematical progress should be taken into account.

In his view, the potential issue is not limited to ECDSA. Buterin singled out lattice-based cryptography as a separate risk area, including ML-DSA and FHE. He suggested that over the next two years, AI-assisted mathematical breakthroughs could significantly affect the security assessment of such schemes.

Buterin noted that Ethereum is already moving toward a “hashes-only” approach for signatures and proofs. According to him, in cases where hash-based cryptography is possible, it has an advantage over lattice-based constructions.

At the same time, he emphasized that the biggest problem arises with public-key encryption, which is needed far beyond blockchains — in particular for secure communications and privacy protocols.

For multisig wallets, Buterin recommended using off-chain signatures to minimize the time between revealing a signature and rotating the key. He also noted that, where possible, signers should rotate keys after every transaction.

At the same time, Buterin separately cautioned against rushed migrations, noting that an incorrect wallet upgrade in itself can lead to a loss of funds.

As a reminder, in August 2026, we reported that Ethereum will change its cryptographic strategy after years of research into the Poseidon hash.

Сообщение Drake and Buterin Urge the Crypto Industry to Prepare for AI-Driven Private Key Hacks появились сначала на INCRYPTED.