A researcher known as Mahdi171 published a proposal on the Ethereum Research Portal on April 29 of this year that seeks to protect Ethereum wallets from potential quantum attacks in a single transaction without changing addresses or transferring funds.
Every time an Ethereum user signs a transaction, their public key remains visible on the network for the duration of the confirmation. This exposure creates a window for sufficiently powerful quantum computers. Possibility to obtain private key and empty wallet Before the original transaction was recorded.
Previous proposals to solve this problem, such as adopting the Falcon signature scheme with account abstraction reported by CriptoNoticias, Each user was required to migrate to a new compatible walleta step that makes mass adoption difficult.
According to the white paper, the proposal eliminates significant risks without changing addresses or moving funds. Instead of exposing your public key when signing a transaction, The system stores only one hash on the chaina mathematical fingerprint derived from that key, and the key cannot be reconstructed.
All transactions after the new proposal is activated will include a zero-knowledge proof (ZK proof), an encryption method that mathematically proves that the user knows the key without revealing it. As a result, a quantum attacker will never be able to obtain the public key needed to perform the attack.
Similarly, researcher Mahdi171 explains that the physical devices that institutions use to securely sign transactions, such as hardware security modules (HSMs), special boxes that store private keys privately, do not need to change as they will continue to work with the current signature scheme. Meanwhile, the ZK layer adds quantum protection to the outside.
Mahdi171 developed a test model to verify that the system technically works. This model takes 87 ms to generate the ZK proof that users must attach to each transaction in order to execute the contract, and 65 ms to verify it.
The cost of verification (the amount paid by network nodes to verify that a proof is valid) in Ethereum is approximately 3 million gas units per transaction. This is an approximate amount since ETH is trading around $2,200 and gas prices are also moderate. USD 66 per operationthe cost is prohibitive for daily use.
The roadmap includes optimizations that would reduce that cost to 800,000 units of gasoline, equivalent to about $17 under the same conditions, but that work is pending.
The same tool that opened the vulnerability is now trying to close it.
The current proposal is based on EIP-7702, an Ethereum improvement enabled in the May 2025 Pectra update that allows regular wallets to temporarily delegate their execution to smart contracts. This feature also Opened up a new type of attack Types of phishing CriptoNoticias has reported on this multiple times. The attacker tricks the user into signing a single authorization that gives the malicious contract complete control over the wallet.
Documented incidents include thefts of $3 million, $900,000, and $150,000, all carried out by phishing using that very delegation mechanism in a single transaction.
The new post-quantum proposal announced today uses the same mechanism, but with a different structure. Rather than delegating to arbitrary contracts, The wallet becomes a restricted contract that only performs actions verified by ZK proofs..
Without such evidence, a contract cannot be concluded. This eliminates vectors exploited by attackers, so Signing is no longer equivalent to handing over control of a walletHowever, it is only used to authorize certain cryptographically verified actions.
So while the Ethereum Foundation (EF), an organization that promotes technology development and adoption for the network, builds a post-quantum roadmap, researchers continue their quest to protect the network from theoretical and future quantum attacks.
(Tag Translation) Blockchain
