Ethereum Researchers Debate AI Threat to Wallets

Leading Ethereum researchers Justin Drake and Vitalik Buterin are publicly debating the risk that AI-assisted mathematics could break ECDSA signature schemes.

Drake called for a "bunker mode" on X, urging users to move funds to addresses that have never signed a transaction. Signing reveals the public key, which attackers could theoretically use with AI to derive the private key; addresses showing only the public key hash remain protected.

Buterin agreed on the need for a hash-function-based architecture long-term but warned against acting too fast. He stated he has lost more money to botched migrations than to hacks. No one has actually broken ECDSA in practice yet, making this dispute primarily about the perceived timeline of the threat and the cost-benefit analysis of defensive strategies.