Ethereum Foundation Expects Quantum-Safe Upgrade to Be Completed by 2029

Odaily Planet Daily News: The Ethereum Foundation released a new roadmap on Tuesday, outlining how the development team is preparing for the threat of quantum computing. The foundation's quantum team estimates that a series of initial upgrades to the network can be completed by 2029, primarily involving four critical hard forks. The foundation stated that quantum computing will eventually break the public-key cryptography that protects ownership, authentication, and consensus in all digital systems, but this threat is not expected to arrive immediately. Researchers from the foundation's quantum team predict that quantum computers with cryptography-related capabilities will take another 8 to 12 years to emerge. Among the four hard forks, the "I" fork will provide quantum-safe public keys for network validators, while the "J" fork will reduce the Gas fees for verifying quantum-safe signatures. These two upgrades have already been considered for inclusion in the Hegota fork, which is expected to take place later this year. The "L" fork will compress the network state representation into zero-knowledge proofs, and the "M" fork will protect Layer 2 networks from quantum threats. Researchers stated that Layer 1 protocol upgrades can be completed by 2029, but the full migration of the execution layer will require several additional years beyond that. The Ethereum Foundation established a dedicated quantum team in January of this year, and the developer testnet began testing some quantum features in March.