As reported by Wu Blockchain, Niko, the leader of the Ethereum Foundation’s privacy project Kohaku, said that Ethereum can start preparing accounts for the post-quantum era today without the need for a hard fork.
According to Nico, implementing the proposed account-level solution would cost approximately $0.07 per account. This design has completed initial review by Fable and additional audits are planned.
“Ethereum can already start preparing accounts for the post-quantum world without waiting for a hard fork. Today it would be just $0.07. More audits to come. We packed a review with Fable before Uncle Sam crashed the party. For the lean funners out there, Verity’s official proof is included,” Kohaku tweeted.
Ethereum researcher says post-quantum account protection can be implemented starting today for $0.07
Niko, leader of the Ethereum Foundation’s privacy project Kohaku, said that Ethereum can start preparing accounts for the post-quantum era today without the need for a hard fork. According to Niko… pic.twitter.com/bsKzN8mcYX
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) June 13, 2026
Quantum computers will eventually break ECDSA, the signature scheme that secures Ethereum and Bitcoin accounts today. Recent stock estimates by Babbush et al. This timeline is closer than previously expected, making post-quantum signature verification at the execution layer an urgent issue.
Next comes the Sphinx –
Ethereum researchers propose SPHINCS-, which introduces efficient stateless post-quantum signature verification on top of EVM.
SPHINCS+ variants, a family of EVM-optimized variants, are derived from recent work on SPHINCS+ and compact hash-based signatures. The goal remains simple. It does not rely on precompilation or protocol changes and is pure on-chain verification to minimize costs.
Ethereum researchers have suggested that a Solidity implementation of the SPHINCS variant that follows the NIST draft for a limited set of signature parameters can already verify standardized style post-quantum signatures on Ethereum at a practical cost (150,000 gas). Formal proofs of verifiers are provided using Lean 4 and Verity.
More aggressive non-standard variants that replace standard hashing components with EVM-native Kecak-based structures and reduce signing budgets to a range relevant to blockchain wallets will eventually be considered. Across these variants, the trade-offs between verification gas, signer work, signature size, and per-key signing budget are studied.
