No quantum threat yet, but crypto must prepare now, says Coinbase board paper co-authored by UCSB's Malkhi
No quantum threat yet, but crypto must prepare now, says Coinbase board paper co-authored by UCSB's Malkhi
The Coinbase Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain released its first position paper today, a 50-page assessment warning that preparing the blockchain ecosystem for a quantum-capable future will take years, and must begin now.
A quantum computer powerful enough to break the cryptography securing Bitcoin, Ethereum, and the world's major blockchains does not yet exist. One is coming. And the industry built on that cryptography will need to prepare.
That is the central argument of a 50-page position paper released today by the Coinbase Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain, an independent panel of cryptographers and systems researchers convened in January 2026. The board includes researchers from Stanford University, the University of Texas at Austin, Bar-Ilan University, the Ethereum Foundation, and Eigen Labs. Representing UC Santa Barbara on the board is Dahlia Malkhi, Professor of Computer Science, ACM Fellow, and founding head of the Foundations of Financial Technology research lab. Malkhi is a co-inventor of the HotStuff consensus protocol, now core to several major blockchain systems.
The paper draws a sharp distinction between what is at risk and what is not. Bitcoin's mining, hash functions, and historical ledger structure are largely safe from quantum attack. The exposure lies at the wallet level, in the digital signatures that prove ownership of assets. An estimated 6.9 million Bitcoin currently sit in wallets whose public keys have already been revealed on the blockchain, the most vulnerable category. Proof-of-stake networks including Ethereum face additional exposure in the signatures validators use to secure consensus.
Solutions, the board emphasizes, already exist. The United States National Institute of Standards and Technology has standardized several post-quantum cryptographic schemes after more than two decades of research. The harder problem is deployment. Post-quantum signatures are substantially larger than those in current use, with costs for transaction speed and storage, and coordinating an upgrade across a decentralized ecosystem, where every wallet holder eventually has to act, has no clear precedent in traditional finance.
The paper surveys migration efforts already underway. Ethereum has published a detailed roadmap. Solana, Algorand, and Aptos have begun offering or planning quantum-resistant options. Layer 2 networks including Optimism have announced transition plans with specific deadlines. Bitcoin's community is exploring new address formats, though no full upgrade plan has been committed. One question, the board notes, will confront every chain eventually: what to do with wallets that are never upgraded. Each community will need to decide whether to freeze, revoke, or leave such assets vulnerable, a decision the board recommends be made and communicated early.
The position paper is the first in a planned series from the board. The Foundations of Financial Technology lab at UCSB, which Malkhi founded in 2024, works on the distributed systems and cryptographic foundations underlying several of the blockchain architectures the paper examines.
First reported by Coinbase Blog.