The quantum threat to Ethereum has become more real: Google has reduced the hacking threshold by 20 times, but protection is already in action
The quantum threat to blockchains is no longer an abstract hypothesis. Fresh research from Google Quantum AI, published in March 2026, radically changes the risk landscape for Ethereum. According to new estimates, cracking the ECDSA digital signature scheme that protects every account on the network will require approximately 20 times less computational resources than previously thought. While earlier forecasts dealt with tens of thousands of logical qubits, the bar has now dropped to 1,200. This is not just a theoretical figure — Google considers it so realistic that it has already set an internal deadline to migrate its own systems to post-quantum cryptography by 2029.
Why This Changes Everything for Ethereum
The vulnerability lies at the very foundation of transactions. When you send funds, your wallet reveals the public key on-chain. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer can derive the private key from it and drain the balance. Current quantum machines cannot do this, but 1,200 logical qubits is already a very concrete engineering benchmark. Particularly alarming is that about 0.1% of all funds on the Ethereum network reside at addresses with exposed public keys — such wallets are vulnerable today. It's not just users at risk: the quantum threat looms over validator signatures, data availability guarantees, and zero-knowledge proof systems that underpin most rollup protocols. All this math breaks down at sufficient quantum power.
Ethereum Foundation Takes Action: Team, Prize, and Hard Fork
In January 2026, the Ethereum Foundation formed a dedicated Post-Quantum Security team led by Tom Coratger. It operates fully transparently, with all results published on the project's website. One of the key researchers, Justin Drake, ranks protection against the quantum threat among the top strategic priorities. The Foundation also announced the Poseidon Prize, a $1 million award for breakthrough solutions in hash-based cryptography, building on three NIST post-quantum cryptography standards approved in August 2024.
In the near term, EIP-8141 is under consideration — a standard that introduces account abstraction at the network level and allows each user to choose their own signature scheme. It is planned to be included in the Hegota hard fork, scheduled for the second half of 2026. The full completion of Ethereum's technical overhaul is expected around 2029 — the same milestone Google has set for itself. For those who want to protect themselves today, the Foundation's Kohaku project exists. It allows creating a quantum-resistant smart account based on the ERC-4337 standard without requiring a hard fork. The cost of the procedure on the first-layer test network is approximately $0.07.
The Rest of the Blockchain Industry: Silence
None of the major blockchains have responded to the threat like Ethereum. Bitcoin, Solana, and others face the same ECDSA vulnerabilities, but no project has assembled a dedicated post-quantum security team or presented a comparable action plan. The figure of 1,200 qubits is not yet a death sentence: to bring quantum hardware to this level, serious engineering challenges must be solved. But a 20-fold reduction in risk assessment, especially from one of the world's most advanced quantum programs, is not a signal the rest of the market can continue to put off.
My analysis: The market is clearly underestimating the speed of quantum progress. The Ethereum Foundation demonstrates exemplary proactivity, but for other players, the time to prepare is running out. Investors should pay attention to projects that are already implementing post-quantum solutions — this could become a key factor in long-term reliability.