Security experts are sounding the alarm that artificial intelligence is dramatically shortening the timeline for quantum computers capable of breaking the cryptography underpinning blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Alex Pruden, CEO of quantum-resistant infrastructure firm Project Eleven, warns that the convergence of AI and quantum computing will create a world where traditional security assumptions no longer hold. “Between quantum and AI, we’re going to go into a world where security, and this is more broadly than just crypto, you simply cannot count on the way you’ve always done things,” Pruden said.
Researchers highlight that AI is already accelerating quantum error correction — a major bottleneck — and could help design the next generation of quantum machines. Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and former Google AI researcher, notes that AI-driven scientific discovery has progressed faster than anticipated. “The rate of research is going to accelerate from here, and we have already seen progress that people didn’t expect would come this early,” he said.
The immediate concern is “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, where adversaries collect encrypted data today in anticipation of future decryption capabilities. “If I know quantum computers are coming in a couple of years, I will start trying to capture all possible data that’s going around,” Polosukhin cautioned. “Everything we’re putting on the internet, if you’re identifiable as a person of interest, you can assume will be decrypted in two years.”
For crypto, the threat is existential because most networks rely on elliptic curve cryptography, which quantum computers could theoretically break to expose private keys. In response, several major blockchains — Ethereum, Zcash, Solana, Ripple, and NEAR — are actively researching or implementing post-quantum migration strategies. NEAR, for instance, plans to integrate post-quantum cryptography directly into its account infrastructure, allowing users to rotate cryptographic schemes without migrating wallets.
The shift is technically challenging: post-quantum cryptographic systems are often larger and slower than current standards. Nevertheless, the broader implication is that security will become a continuous, adaptive process rather than a static foundation. “Nothing is going to be as static as it’s been in the future,” Pruden said. “Either a quantum computer comes online to break some fundamental assumption, or AI gets smart enough to break that assumption too.”
