Niko, leader of the Ethereum Foundation’s privacy project Kohaku, said that Ethereum accounts can start preparing for post-quantum risks without waiting for a hard fork.
In a June 2026 post about X, Niko wrote, “Ethereum can already start preparing accounts for the post-quantum world without waiting for a hard fork.”
Ethereum can already start preparing accounts for the post-quantum world without waiting for a hard fork.
Today, that would be just $0.07.
Further audits are planned. Although I crammed a review with Fable before Uncle Sam crashed my party. my…
— Nico (@ncsgy) June 13, 2026
Researchers said the current cost would be about $0.07 per account. This claim refers to account-level protection rather than full-chain upgrades. This means that while Ethereum developers continue to work on long-term protocol changes, users or wallet teams can add protections through smart contract logic.
SPHINCS – Targets low-cost EVM verification
A technical post from Ethereum Research describes SPHINCS, an EVM-optimized family of stateless post-quantum signatures. This design comes from SPHINCS+ and new work on compact hash-based signatures. Its goal is to reduce on-chain validation costs without using precompilation or changes to Ethereum rules.
According to Nico’s post, Solidity verifiers can already check post-quantum style signatures on Ethereum at a practical cost. One optimized variant, called C13, validates with approximately 127,000 gases and uses a 3,704-byte signature. This research also includes Verity’s formal proof of Lean 4.
The problem it is trying to solve is simple. Currently, Ethereum and Bitcoin accounts rely on ECDSA signatures. Researchers warn that future powerful quantum computers could break such codes. SPHINCS – uses hash-based signatures and is intended to counter these attacks.
Privacy and security remain a priority
A recent crypto.news report indicates that this proposal fits into the broader Ethereum roadmap. Vitalik Buterin discussed the account abstraction that allows wallets to define how transactions are authorized and paid. Additionally, account abstraction forms part of Ethereum’s short-term privacy plans with FOCIL and keyed nonces.
As previously reported, Buterin said the Ethereum Foundation will focus more on long-term survival, security, privacy, openness, and resistance to censorship. The same report said Ethereum’s roadmap work includes post-quantum security and formal verification as future goals.
Additionally, externally owned account signatures using ECDSA are one area at risk for future quantum attacks. Regarding wallets, the report states that native account abstraction could allow accounts to adopt post-quantum signature schemes if efficient options exist.
Audits and limits remain important
Nico said the design has undergone initial review with Fable and further audits are planned. This review does not finalize the system. The Ethereum Research post mentions limitations such as non-standard configurations, limits on the number of signatures, and differences between Kecck-based designs and NIST-compliant versions.
Importantly for users, Ethereum may not need to wait for a complete protocol change before wallets can begin testing quantum-resistant account protection. Next steps for developers include further reviews, more secure wallet flows, clearer cost models, and better hardware support.
The account path is important because many funds are stored in old-style addresses. The wallet-based route could allow high-value accounts to test protections before Ethereum adopts widespread changes through subsequent technical upgrades, proposal rounds, and extensive public reviews.
This proposal does not mean that Ethereum will face quantum attacks immediately. Nor is it a replacement for future network-level work. This shows that account-level protections can now move from research to testing, and the cost is low enough, according to Niko, for widespread trials.
