Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake set December 2028 as a goal for finishing Ethereum's post-quantum transition, ahead of the team's published 2029 target. The timetable is a goal rather than an agreed activation schedule, and migrating existing accounts remains a separate task.
Justin Drake, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, outlined a December 2028 goal for completing Ethereum's "full post-quantum and post-AI transition" at the Devcon 8 opening ceremony. That timetable runs faster than the Foundation team's published 2029 protocol-upgrade target.
The Foundation said the work covers three protocol layers: validator signatures on the consensus layer, data availability on the data layer, and account authentication on the execution layer. The Foundation's post-quantum team explains that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could recover a private key from an exposed public key, enabling theft and impersonation.
The proposed fork sequence
According to Ethereum developer-tooling lead 0xRahul's account of the presentation, the sequence comprises Glamsterdam, Hegotá and the provisionally named I* and J* forks. Conference attendee Bob Summerwill identified J* as the proposed post-quantum endpoint.
However, the plan is not settled. The Strawmap describes itself as a work in progress rather than a prediction, and the post-quantum team says final upgrades are determined through Ethereum's open governance processes.
Code still in progress
A key component is leanVM, a minimal proof-generating virtual machine intended to make larger post-quantum signatures practical by aggregating their verification. The Foundation said leanVM had been formally verified end to end in the preceding few days. Yet the code repository still labels formal verification as in progress and warns that leanVM is not yet production ready.
For holders, a protocol upgrade and the migration of an existing account remain different steps. The Defiant previously reported that verifying alternative signatures in a smart contract does not automatically remove the authority of an existing account's original signing key.
EIP-8141, a proposed native route to post-quantum signatures, remains labeled Draft.
Source: The Defiant
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