Quantum threat countdown? Vitalik and venture capitalists warn: encryption technology could be breached as early as 2028.

Metaculus' latest forecast indicates that quantum computers capable of running Shor's Algorithm may emerge by 2034, significantly ahead of the 20-year expectation from three years ago. Meanwhile, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin and Dragonfly partner Haseeb Qureshi, among others, have warned that the real Q-Day, when quantum computers will be able to break encryption technologies, could come between 2028 and 2033.

( “Understanding Quantum Computers in an Hour”: Take you deep into the quantum revolution, capable of breaking network encryption in just a few seconds )

Vitalik sounds the alarm: Ethereum and Bitcoin's ECC encryption will be cracked.

In yesterday's Devconnect speech, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin rarely issued a direct warning to the encryption industry:

The security foundation of Bitcoin and Ethereum, which is elliptic curve encryption (ECC), will perish.

He believes that quantum computing may have the capability to undermine the security model of Ethereum before the 2028 U.S. presidential election, and Ethereum has about four years left to consider countermeasures.

However, Vitalik is concerned that as Ethereum scales, the core protocol will gradually become difficult to change. Therefore, the transition to post-quantum cryptography that resists quantum computer cracking (PQC) must be advanced step by step in a timely manner.

Quantum threats are 20 years ahead: RSA cracking time is moved up from 2052 to 2034.

The prediction platform Metaculus further pointed out that the time for quantum computers to run Shor's Algorithm and successfully break RSA has been significantly advanced from 2052 to 2034, with the threat quietly approaching.

However, Haseeb Qureshi, a partner at Dragonfly, stated that the success of Shor's Algorithm does not mean that the 256-bit ECC of blockchain will immediately collapse, but it symbolizes that one form of encryption is approaching its end:

The current predictions give us about ten years before we see modern public key encryption truly broken by quantum computers.

He emphasized that this is a distribution that is vague and has upper and lower limits, rather than absolute years. Progress may be advanced or delayed.

Haseeb: A reasonable PQC transition will take at least four years.

Haseeb has also repeatedly reminded that the outside world should not panic excessively. It will take a longer period of stable computation, etc., to truly threaten the private keys of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

He also agrees with Vitalik's statement that the encryption industry needs to initiate a comprehensive PQC transition in the coming years: “All blockchains need to adapt to post-quantum cryptography.”

An orderly transition may take at least four years, which means we still have a few years to decide on a viable upgrade path.

Nic Carter sets a warning line: 2028 to 2033

On the other hand, Nic Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, quoted quantum scientist Scott Aaronson as saying, “Fault-tolerant quantum computers capable of executing Shor's algorithm are expected to emerge before the next U.S. presidential election.”

After integrating the existing data, he determined that the time frame for Q-Day would be narrowed down to 2028 to 2033, making it a risk that must be taken seriously at present.

Quantum Threat Countdown: How Blockchain Transitions into Challenges

The encryption industry has long been aware of the existence of quantum threats, and researchers have begun developing quantum-safe signature schemes while attempting to design a migration path that can be switched gradually. However, the biggest challenge has always been: “How to migrate billions of private keys, wallets, nodes, and protocols worldwide together?”

Whether Q-Day is near or far, this will be the largest scale collaboration and migration in the history of blockchain, and time is of the essence.

( Satoshi Nakamoto's million BTC is under threat from quantum computing, developers propose a three-phase elimination of old Bitcoin wallet addresses ).

Is this article a countdown to quantum threats? Vitalik and investors warn: encryption technology could be breached as early as 2028, first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.