Unchained

← Unchained21 okt · 1 u 02 min

How Crypto Can Survive If AI or Quantum Computers Break Its Cryptography

How Crypto Can Survive If AI or Quantum Computers Break Its Cryptography21 okt1 u 02 min

Justin Drake says crypto should brace for AI breaking elliptic curves before Q-Day. Project Eleven's Alex Pruden and Conor Deegan weigh in on what's actually at risk.

========================================================

Thank you to our sponsor!

Put your crypto to work with Nexo: earn daily interest or borrow funds against your assets on one platform trusted by more than 10 million clients.

Find out more at ⁠⁠https://unchainedcrypto.com/go/nexo-podcast-sn⁠⁠.

Geo-restrictions, eligibility and terms apply.

========================================================

Quick favor: We're deciding what Unchained does next; new shows, stream times, what's worth paying for.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Our listener survey⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ takes five minutes, it's anonymous, and I read the write-in answers myself. Everyone who takes it can enter a drawing for a free year of Unchained Premium or Bits + Bips Premium. Open through Sunday, October 18.

— Laura

========================================================

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake set off a debate across crypto by urging chains to plan for "bunker mode," a controlled migration of assets to addresses whose public keys stay hidden behind a hash. His concern is not only quantum computers, but AI getting good enough at math to break elliptic curves first.

Alex Pruden, co-founder and CEO of Project Eleven, and Conor Deegan, its CTO, join Laura Shin to sort out what is at risk. They cover how ECDSA works, why Conor says no scheme in production is broken yet even though Hawk and McEliece fell to AI attacks, why Coinbase's Yehuda Lindell notes hash functions have broken more often than curves, and why NIST still favors lattices.