Top 1,000 richest wallets on Ethereum ($ETHA network can be systematically exhausted in nine days by an attacker equipped with a sufficiently powerful quantum computer, according to new research.
A study published by the Google Quantum AI team on March 31 found that the majority of Ethereum accounts have already initiated at least one transaction, making public keys visible and funds quantum vulnerable. The most vulnerable Ethereum accounts combined hold approximately 20.5 million accounts $ETHvalued at approximately $4.27 billion at the time of writing.
Ethereum accounts that have never sent a transaction are safe for now because their public keys are masked behind the wallet address.
Is there a solution to quantum attacks on Ethereum?
This study highlights Account Abstraction (AA) as the most cited quantum defense on Ethereum through the 2023 ERC-4337 upgrade. This upgrade provides more flexibility and reduces reliance on static keys, but it does not allow you to hide public keys that are already on-chain.
Therefore, the paper concludes that AA only treats the symptoms rather than the root cause. Last month, Ethereum network co-founder Vitalik Buterin proposed a roadmap to make the network quantum resilient.
Buterin’s proposal aims to address four vulnerabilities: consensus signatures, data availability, wallet signatures, and application layer zero-knowledge proofs. However, the public keys of top high-net-worth accounts that have already undergone transactions are subject to quantum attacks and are not covered by these proposals.
Meanwhile, the Ethereum community has relied on the post-quantum team led by Thomas Collager to ensure a smooth transition without losing funds. On the Ethereum network, which boasts the largest smart contract ecosystem, a secure post-quantum security roadmap will be key to maintaining user trust by the end of the century.
