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ECDSA

Elliptic-curve digital signature algorithm widely used in TLS, Bitcoin, and Ethereum; NIST plans to deprecate it by 2030 and disallow it by 2035.

Known aliases

  • Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm
  • secp256k1

Current stories

investOne report1 publisher

Justin Drake's plan to move coins to fresh addresses meets objections from wallet and scaling builders

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake says ECDSA could break in the worst case within months and wants coins moved to fresh addresses. Of six other people Cointelegraph quotes, one shares his alarm, two dispute the evidence and three question the remedy.

Reality

Evidence22
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+40
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence50
investConfirmed15 publishers

Justin Drake tells large crypto holders to move to fresh addresses before AI can break ECDSA

Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake says AI could break ECDSA in "months not years" and wants large holders on fresh addresses now. Custodians would bear most of the cost, and his evidence is a single AI math result.

Perspective Coverage

15 publishers
Builder
Builder 37%
Operator
Operator 34%
Investor
Investor 29%

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+50
Incentives45
Confidence62
investOne report1 publisher

Zakura expects post-quantum signature opcodes for Zcash's transparent payments in January

Zakura, a Zcash full-node builder, expects opcodes for hash-based signatures on transparent payments to land in Zcash in January. No date has been confirmed for switching them on across the network, so January is when the code arrives and the protection date is still open.

Publishers:decrypt.co

Reality

Evidence35
Adoption10
Hype gap+30
Incentives55
Confidence40
investOne report1 publisher

Ava Labs puts an internal team on hash-based backups for Avalanche's ECDSA signatures

Ava Labs has an internal group studying hash-based signatures as a fallback for Avalanche's ECDSA, CEO Emin Gun Sirer said on October 9. Nothing is scheduled for the protocol, so the effort is a hedge against a failure Sirer ranks behind ordinary code bugs.

Reality

Evidence35
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap0
Incentives55
Confidence40
investConfirmed8 publishers

Europol tells crypto holders to move exposed wallet keys before quantum computers can break them

Europol named wallet keys as crypto's main quantum exposure, a risk that covers the 6.04 million bitcoin Glassnode counts with public keys already on-chain. Its report says those coins can be protected only by moving them before an attack, so the length of the migration queue sets the deadline for custodians.

Perspective Coverage

8 publishers
Builder
Builder 42%
Operator
Operator 26%
Investor
Investor 32%

Reality

Evidence72
Adoption18
Hype gap+8
Incentives35
Confidence68
scienceConfirmed4 publishers

Vitalik Buterin warns AI mathematics could weaken lattice cryptography within two years

Vitalik Buterin said AI-driven mathematics has a good chance of seriously weakening lattice cryptography within two years. He offered no demonstrated attack, and for teams adopting post-quantum schemes the forecast argues for lattice deployments built to be replaced.

Perspective Coverage

4 publishers
Builder
Builder 40%
Operator
Operator 41%
Investor
Investor 19%

Reality

Evidence40
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+30
Incentives35
Confidence60
investOne report1 publisher

Buterin gives AI-driven maths a good chance of weakening ML-DSA within two years

Vitalik Buterin says AI-driven maths research has a "good chance" of significantly weakening lattice signatures such as ML-DSA within two years. His fixes put the cost on key sizes and multisig signing routines while steering holders away from mass fund migrations.

Reality

Evidence30
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+35
Incentives35
Confidence30
investOne report1 publisher

Researchers forge RSA signatures from a hardware security module by making it sign 4 billion raw numbers

UC San Diego and INRIA researchers forged RSA signatures on a 1,024-bit key inside a hardware security module after about 4 billion signing requests. The key stayed inside the device throughout, so for custodians the exposure is in signing settings, starting with the FIPS mode the researchers switched off.

Publishers:decrypt.co

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption
Not scored
Hype gap+10
Incentives
Not scored
Confidence40
buildOne report1 publisher

31 of 70 injected defects survived Prismwar's passing gate suite

DHSeaDev's write-up on the browser card game Prismwar shows a replay check passing ten of ten matches because the recorder and the playback player both skipped the AI's defence step, so the round trip compared a bug against a copy of itself.

Publishers:dev.to

Reality

Evidence45
Adoption12
Hype gap+10
Incentives55
Confidence45
investOne report1 publisher

Google and Ethereum set 2029 dates one year ahead of NIST's ECDSA deprecation

LayerZero shipped a lattice-based proof component on Wednesday; Coinbase gathered Bitcoin developers and custodians at Stanford and left without a chosen signature scheme, which is the piece no date can order.

Reality

Evidence34
Adoption24
Hype gap+26
Incentives72
Confidence44
investOne report1 publisher

Bitcoin's first post-quantum signature BIP arrives with its tradeoffs already conceded

Blockstream's SHRINCS is the first post-quantum signature scheme written to Bitcoin's block economics, and Jonas Nick says up front it is not optimal. The argument now is about price.

Reality

Evidence55
Adoption22
Hype gap+12
Incentives68
Confidence48
investOne report1 publisher

Ethereum's quantum plan gets a one-way switch: draft EIP would retire BLS for good

A contributor's draft would make the validator deposit contract variable length and add a mode to end BLS signatures permanently. It is unfinished, unnumbered, and aimed at a 2029 target that may move.

Reality

Evidence54
Adoption10
Hype gap+18
Incentives55
Confidence52