Buterin on AI Risks for Cryptography and Wallet Migration

Vitalik Buterin warned about potential security risks that may arise due to the rapid development of AI and related advancements in mathematics. He expressed his position in response to Ethereum researcher Justin Drake's call to prepare for a 'bunker' mode, which, according to Drake, requires major holders to consider moving assets to new addresses with closed public keys. Drake argued that elliptic-curve digital signature (ECDSA) could theoretically be broken in months rather than years.

However, Buterin noted that users should not 'rush to move their funds to new wallets today,' adding that the industry should reduce reliance on cryptography vulnerable to both quantum and potential AI-based attacks. He also expressed concerns about pushing the development of systems that use solvable mathematical problems, emphasizing that people might have missed mathematical simplifications that AI could discover, which has already happened in the past with factorization methods.

Moreover, Buterin pointed out that the problem is exacerbated by the fact that public key encryption is necessary for communication, privacy networks, and websites, and cannot simply be replaced with hashes. Buterin's proposed approach, which suggests avoiding lattice-based systems and instead using hash-based signatures like WOTS and SPHINCS-, makes sense only if they can perform the required tasks. Following Drake's warnings, there was criticism from cryptographers, such as Yehuda Lindell, head of cryptography at Coinbase, who stated that 'there is no evidence' that longstanding assumptions about the integrity of ECDSA are under threat. Buterin also mentioned that hasty migrations could lead to losses, noting that failed migrations have cost him more than all hacks combined.