A recent study conducted by XRP Ledger validator Vet has revealed a significant vulnerability: 76.82 billion XRP are exposed to potential quantum computing attacks. The analysis scanned 7,810,364 XRPL accounts, finding that 5.6 million have their public keys on-chain, making them susceptible to future quantum decryption.
The most problematic group is dormant wallets. Accounts inactive for at least five years hold 2.94% of the total XRP supply, representing 3.83% of all exposed XRP. This group includes 1.33 million accounts. Vet noted that the reasons for dormancy are unknown—owners may have lost keys, forgotten their accounts, or be unable to act, creating a policy quandary for the XRPL community regarding future migration.
On the positive side, 23.16 billion XRP remains quantum-safe by never having signed a transaction or by using key rotation and disabled master keys. Multi-signature wallets, however, are not automatically safe—242 such wallets holding 36.60 billion XRP have signer keys already on-chain, necessitating careful signer-key rotation.
Galaxy Digital's research director Alex Thorn provided broader context for Bitcoin. In a May 3, 2026 note, Thorn observed that the Bitcoin community is converging on a consensus to counter the quantum threat. The plan involves a transition to Post-Quantum Cryptography via soft forks introducing lattice-based signatures. Crucially, the community is considering a 'use it or lose it' migration period for vulnerable legacy p2pkh addresses, potentially followed by freezing or burning non-migrated funds after a grace period. This approach would prevent a catastrophic supply shock from quantum attackers draining early Bitcoin wallets.
