On April 14 of this year, a developer under the pseudonym Valisthea published a standard proposal (ERC) on the Ethereum Magicians Forum for registering and managing quantum computer-resistant cryptographic keys directly on the network without changing the underlying protocol or waiting for the consensus of the entire developer community.
Valisthea’s ERC operates on a separate layer. Instead of changing Ethereum from within, we propose smart contracts Today, any project can be adopted independently. Each Ethereum address can register, activate, rotate, or revoke post-quantum keys without touching existing infrastructure. This standard defines a clear life cycle for each key. That is, a key is active from registration, then can be rotated or revoked, and each state is audited on the chain.
To avoid breaking compatibility during migration, Proposal includes double signature mode: Contracts implementing this may require both classical signatures with the current Ethereum system and post-quantum signatures on the same message. If one of the two schemes is compromised, the other continues to protect operations.
This proposal comes at a time when the quantum threat to distributed ledger networks (blockchains) has moved from a theoretical discussion to an operational priority. In January 2026, the Ethereum Foundation formally formed a team dedicated to post-quantum security, and in March announced a roadmap consisting of four milestones. The problem is that anything that doesn’t have a specific date requires significant changes to the protocol, a hard fork or fork that requires network-wide coordination.
What problems are not yet addressed in the official roadmap?
One of the risks that justifies the urgency is the so-called Harvest now, decrypt later or “Harvest today, decrypt later”: A well-resourced attacker may already have recorded signed transactions for decryption on Ethereum in the future, when equipped with capable quantum computers. In this scenario, every public key exposed on the chain is a potential target. This proposal does not solve this problem at the protocol levelBut before that threat arrives, we provide standard tools to get your project up and running with a resilient key.
This proposal leaves some room for discussion in the community. What minimum level of NIST security is required, whether to store keys completely on-chain (at a cost of up to 100,000 gas units per record) or just hashed identifiers, and how to handle key portability between Ethereum and its second-tier network.
The fundamental question Valisthea raises is whether Ethereum Allows standard infrastructure to be ready when real quantum pressures occuror if each project ends up building its own solution For this purpose.
(Tag Translation) Quantum Computing
