“5 Major Quantum Attack Paths” Exposed! Google Warns: $100 Billion in Assets on Ethereum at Risk

Google’s Quantum AI team released its latest report on Monday, and almost all eyes in the cryptocurrency community have focused on Bitcoin: it can be cracked in 9 minutes, with up to a 41% theft rate, exposing 6.9 million bitcoins to risk—yet the market has given a cold shoulder to the report’s section on “Ether,” even though the risks lurking there are even more astonishing, warranting the highest level of alert for all investors. This white paper, co-authored by Google, Justin Drake, a core research fellow at the Ethereum Foundation, and Dan Boneh, a leading figure in cryptography at Stanford University, analyzes the “five most fatal paths” by which quantum computers in the future could break Ethereum, and each path could precisely strike different life-lines of Ether; based on current coin prices, the value of assets directly exposed to risk has already exceeded $100 billion, and if it triggers a domino effect, the damage will be impossible to estimate.

One: The “naked-running” whale wallets In the world of Bitcoin, a user’s “public key” can be hidden behind a hash function (Hash—essentially a digital fingerprint) before it is actually spent. But on Ethereum, once a user sends a transaction, the public key is “permanently publicly visible” on the blockchain. Unless the account is completely abandoned and the funds are transferred away, it cannot be replaced. Google’s team estimates that, currently, the top 1,000 whale wallets by Ether balance (holding a total of about 20.5 million Ether) are already fully exposed to risk. If quantum computers only need 9 minutes to crack a single private key, in less than 9 days, the wallets of these 1,000 whales will be emptied out. Two: The “super administrator” that controls DeFi’s life-and-death ledger On Ethereum, the smart contracts that support lending, trading, and stablecoin issuance typically grant “special permissions” to a small number of administrators, allowing a “super administrator” to pause contracts, upgrade code, or even transfer massive sums of funds. The report finds that at least 70 of the administrators of major contracts have their keys exposed on-chain, involving about 2.5 million Ether. Even more hair-raising is the chain reaction beyond Ether. These administrator accounts also hold the “minting rights” for major stablecoins such as USDT and USDC. In other words, once a quantum hacker compromises one of those keys, they could issue tokens indefinitely, like an all-purpose printing press, triggering a chain reaction across lending markets that use these tokens as collateral. The white paper estimates that on Ethereum there are as much as $200 billion in stablecoins and tokenized assets, all of which rely on these fragile administrator keys.

Three: Layer 2 that depends on the same set of cryptography To increase transaction speed, most Ethereum transactions are processed off-chain via Layer 2 solutions such as Arbitrum and Optimism, and then the results are sent back. But here’s the problem: the Ethereum built-in cryptographic tools that these Layer 2 systems rely on all lack “quantum cracking” resistance. Roughly estimated by the report, across major Layer 2s and cross-chain bridges, at least 15 million Ether is exposed to risk. Currently the only one considered secure is StarkNet, which uses a hash algorithm (not an elliptic-curve signature algorithm). Four: Attacking the “staking system” to knock the network offline Ethereum relies on a “Proof-of-Stake (PoS)” mechanism to maintain network security, where validators vote on which transactions are valid. However, the report believes that the digital signature verification mechanisms used in these votes are also vulnerable to quantum computers. Currently, about 37 million Ether across the network is in a staked state. If hackers successfully control one-third of the validator nodes, they can take the network offline, preventing transactions from being confirmed; if they control two-thirds of the validator nodes, hackers could even essentially rule without restraint, directly tampering with the blockchain’s historical records. The report also specifically warns that if staking collateral is overly concentrated in large capital pools (for example, Lido, with a market share of about 20%), hackers only need to focus their firepower on a single provider’s infrastructure to significantly shorten the attack timeline. Five: A “permanent vulnerability” that only needs to be cracked once The report also mentions the most special—and most worrying—attack path. Ethereum uses a system called “Data Availability Sampling” to verify whether the transaction data returned by Layer 2 truly exists. In its initial setup, the system generated a set of “absolute secret numbers” that were supposed to be thoroughly destroyed later. Once a hacker uses a quantum computer, they can reconstruct this set of secret numbers from publicly available data. The most frightening part is that once cracked even once, these secret numbers become a suite of tools that can operate permanently—meaning that even without using a quantum computer, hackers can permanently forge data availability verification proofs. The Google team even describes that this exploit tool “has a high trading value,” and once it reaches the black market, all Layer 2 networks that rely on Ethereum’s Blob data system will be affected.

A rescue-the-$100-billion mega-mission: Ethereum’s defenses and weak points Of course, the Ethereum camp is not sitting idly by. Justin Drake, a research fellow at the Ethereum Foundation and co-author of the white paper, reveals that the Foundation has officially launched a “post-quantum” research hub entry point just last week, and stated that the relevant research has been ongoing for more than 8 years. Currently, testnets are being advanced every week, and a multi-stage hard fork upgrade roadmap has been set, aiming to fully roll out quantum-resistant cryptography before 2029. In addition, compared with Bitcoin’s block production every 10 minutes, Ethereum’s ultra-fast block time is just 12 seconds, which also greatly increases the difficulty for hackers when attempting real-time transaction interception. However, the white paper also reminds readers: even if Ethereum mainnet successfully upgrades, the thousands of smart contracts already deployed on-chain will not automatically become immune.