Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has urged crypto users not to panic over the possibility that artificial intelligence (AI) could accelerate mathematical breakthroughs that challenge today’s cryptographic systems.
In a post on X on October 8, Buterin said he does not think users should rush to move their funds into new wallets. He said, however, that keeping funds in an address that has never been used to sign a transaction can be a sensible precaution if doing so is easy.
“I don’t recommend anyone scramble to move their funds to new wallets today,” Buterin wrote.
Buterin said the crypto industry needs to think more seriously about the possibility of AI-accelerated attacks on cryptography, alongside the longer-standing threat posed by quantum computing.
His comments came after Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake called for the industry to begin planning for what he described as “bunker mode,” including a controlled migration of funds to fresh addresses.
Lattice Cryptography Comes Into Focus
One of Buterin’s main concerns is lattice-based cryptography, which has been widely considered a promising approach for systems designed to withstand quantum attacks.
Buterin specifically mentioned ML-DSA, fully homomorphic encryption and other lattice-based systems. He said the industry’s developers have generally been comfortable with the idea that elliptic curves could eventually face serious problems from quantum computers while lattice-based cryptography would remain safer.
According to Buterin, that assumption may not hold if AI starts making major advances in mathematics. “There is a good chance that the concrete security of lattices will take serious hits from the next two years of AI math,” he said.
His concern is not that these systems have already been broken. Rather, AI could help researchers find mathematical shortcuts that have remained hidden from humans.
Buterin pointed to the history of factoring as an example. Over several decades, researchers developed increasingly efficient methods for attacking factoring problems. He said there could be similar discoveries waiting to be found for elliptic curves and lattices.
Ethereum’s Shift Toward Hashes
The issue is one reason Buterin said Ethereum has been moving toward what he calls a “hash-only” direction.
“This is a major part of the reason why for the past year ethereum’s lean roadmap has been going in the ‘hash-only’ direction,” he wrote.
The approach seeks to rely more heavily on hash-based cryptographic constructions where they can perform the required function, reducing dependence on mathematical structures that could potentially contain weaknesses that have not yet been discovered.
Buterin said Ethereum’s roadmap avoids lattice-based systems such as ML-DSA and Falcon where possible and uses hash-based signature schemes including WOTS and SPHINCS-.
There is a limitation, however. Hashes cannot replace every form of cryptography. Public-key encryption, which is used in secure communications and privacy systems, requires some form of mathematical structure. That means the challenge extends beyond Ethereum and the crypto industry.
Buterin’s warning comes as he has also highlighted the wider role AI could play in crypto. At an OKX summit in Singapore, he said AI agents could eventually become a main way for users to interact with blockchains, handling technical tasks that are now done through websites and other interfaces.
He has also warned that AI could make blockchain privacy harder to maintain by making it easier to analyze large amounts of public transaction data. As AI becomes better at connecting information, simply keeping a user’s real name separate from a wallet address may no longer provide enough privacy.
Don’t Rush Wallet Migrations
Buterin’s comments came after Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake called on the blockchain industry to start preparing for “bunker mode.”
Drake suggested that large holders consider moving funds to fresh addresses whose public keys have not been exposed through previous transactions. He also warned that the process should be controlled rather than rushed.
Buterin made a similar point. If users can easily keep their funds in unused addresses, he said, there is a benefit in doing so because the public key remains hidden until the address is used to sign a transaction.
“If it’s not difficult for you, keeping your funds in addresses which have not yet been used to make a transaction is a good idea,” he wrote.
At the same time, he warned that moving funds can create its own risks. “But be careful about migrations; I personally have lost more money in botched migrations than I have lost in all hacks combined,” Buterin said.
For now, Buterin is not calling for an emergency wallet migration. His broader message is that developers and large crypto holders should start thinking about how quickly AI could change the assumptions behind today’s cryptographic systems.
The discussion is likely to add pressure on the industry to strengthen post-quantum security and explore hash-based alternatives, while avoiding rushed changes that could put user funds at risk.
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