AI Compresses Quantum Threat Timeline for BTC and ETH

Security researchers and crypto builders are increasingly warning that artificial intelligence is compressing the timeline for cryptographically relevant quantum computers, while simultaneously becoming a weapon in its own right for finding software flaws and breaking cryptographic assumptions. Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven, said the combination is producing a permanent arms race in which neither blockchains nor broader internet infrastructure can rely on static security upgrades. Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and a former Google AI researcher, added that AI has already been accelerating materials and systems discovery for years and is now feeding back into quantum research itself.

Why it matters

Most blockchain networks — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Zcash, Ripple and NEAR among them — depend on the same elliptic curve cryptography that secures the broader internet. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive private keys from public keys, compromising vulnerable wallets and signing systems. Researchers are already worried about "harvest now, decrypt later" attacks: adversaries capturing encrypted traffic today with the expectation that future quantum machines will eventually decrypt it. Polosukhin said anyone identifiable as a person of interest should assume their communications "will be decrypted in two years."

Market impact

The practical response is a structural shift rather than a one-time migration. NEAR has already announced plans to integrate post-quantum cryptography directly into its account infrastructure so users can rotate schemes without moving assets to new wallets. Ethereum, Zcash, Solana and Ripple are all researching or implementing post-quantum transitions. The trade-off is real — post-quantum systems are typically larger and slower than today's standards, and the bigger story may be that cryptography can no longer be treated as static infrastructure upgraded once per decade. AI is now being deployed on both sides: offensively to find implementation bugs and probe cryptography itself, and defensively for code auditing, testing and formal verification of post-quantum systems.