Cardano Founder: Quantum Risk to Crypto Likely by 2033

At Consensus Miami, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson warned there is greater than a 50% chance quantum computing will pose a real threat to cryptocurrencies before 2033 and said Cardano is shifting its core protocols to lattice-based cryptography to prepare.

Most major blockchains rely on elliptic-curve signatures. Those signatures can be broken by Shor’s algorithm on a sufficiently powerful quantum computer, allowing an attacker to derive private keys from public keys, forge signatures and potentially disrupt ledger consensus. The risk is higher for addresses that reveal public keys when funds are spent.

Hoskinson described the timeline as an engineering deadline rather than a distant theoretical issue, pointing to advances in neutral-atom hardware and government-backed benchmarking programs such as DARPA’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiative. He also warned about “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, in which adversaries collect encrypted data today with the goal of decrypting it once quantum machines can break public-key cryptography.

Cardano plans to rely on lattice-based cryptography, including problems such as Learning With Errors that researchers view as resistant to both classical and quantum attacks. The team intends to incorporate U.S. NIST FIPS 203 through 206 specifications into its roadmap, covering schemes like ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA and Falcon-style signatures. A research proposal on quantum resistance will be published while community votes on broader strategy are underway, and planned hard forks are expected to handle protocol changes.

Other networks are testing post-quantum options. The Solana Foundation deployed post-quantum signatures on a testnet after consulting with Project Eleven, writing, “Quantum computers aren’t here yet, but the Solana Foundation is preparing for the possibility.”

Estimates on when public-key cryptography might be broken vary. Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly, gave a median estimate of roughly 10 years before modern public-key schemes are definitively broken, while noting substantial uncertainty. The exact timing depends on progress in hardware scale, error correction and fault tolerance-technical hurdles that remain unresolved.

Researchers and protocol teams are also concerned about legacy exposure: encrypted communications and stored data captured now could become readable once quantum decryption is possible. Some projects are prioritizing cryptographic agility so signing and encryption primitives can be swapped without rebuilding systems.

Developers are beginning to add post-quantum standards to roadmaps and testnets. How quickly and smoothly major networks migrate their cryptographic foundations will affect the resilience of digital assets and blockchain systems if quantum capabilities reach the levels described.