QuantumProof Research • August 2, 2025 • 7 min read

Quantum Threat 101: The Risk to Today’s Crypto

Quantum computing threatens every blockchain that leans on classical discrete logarithms or RSA. This primer distills the narrative for founders, treasury managers, and regulators who need to understand why migration is no longer optional.

Harvest Now, Decrypt Later

Adversaries are already collecting encrypted traffic and on-chain signatures today with the expectation they can brute-force them tomorrow. When a sufficiently powerful fault-tolerant quantum computer arrives, it will retroactively drain any wallet whose public key has been exposed.

Key Risk

Exposed Public Keys

UTXO chains publish public keys once funds are spent, leaving a permanent archive for quantum computers to exploit. Account-based chains leak keys via staking, smart contracts, and bridge validators.

Key Risk

Weak Signature Diversity

Most major networks use variants of ECDSA/EdDSA. A universal break means simultaneous compromise across the industry, overwhelming incident response capacity.

Key Risk

Custody Aggregation

Institutional custodians operate massive key pools. A quantum attacker gains economies of scale by targeting a handful of custodians to drain entire segments of the market.

Timeline Reality Check

Year	Milestone	Implication
2025	NIST publishes PQC standards	Vendors start shipping hybrid firmware; regulators demand roadmaps.
2026	First hybrid HSMs in production	Dual-signature support becomes available without forklift upgrades.
2027	Commercial 10M-qubit projections	Reasonable expectation for break-through labs; risk premiums shift markets.
2028+	Accelerated arms race	AI-assisted cryptanalysis reduces runway between “safe” and “broken.”

Mitigation Playbook

Adopt protocol-level 2FA: Even if a private key leaks, attackers cannot authorize spends without validator-approved second factors.
Introduce PQ signature support: Stage PQ verification now so you can enforce it later without downtime.
Segment treasury exposure: Split holdings across chains that enforce dual approvals and support PQ fallback.

QuantumProof handles the blueprint: validators shard 2FA secrets, signatures remain performant, and PQ support can be activated without paralyzing UX. Migration isn’t about a single algorithm—it’s about removing the single point of failure.

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