Ethereum researcher Justin Drake is urging the blockchain industry to begin preparing for what he calls bunker mode. Writing on October 7, 2026, he said: Today I call upon the blockchain industry to calmly start planning for ‘bunker mode.’ He encouraged large and sophisticated crypto participants to consider a controlled movement of funds to new addresses whose public keys have never been exposed on-chain, using existing wallets and infrastructure.
The warning centers on the possible future failure of the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), which secures Bitcoin, Ethereum and many other networks. Drake asked the industry to consider an extreme theoretical scenario in which ECDSA is broken by classical computers before the quantum computing milestone often called Q-day. In that case, he said, a mathematical breakthrough could allow attackers to extract a private key from a visible public key in roughly one week using available hardware. He stressed that no such attack is publicly known today.
Drake linked the concern to rapid advances in AI, including OpenAI’s progress in mathematical reasoning, and warned that mathematical superintelligence could accelerate discoveries at an unprecedented pace. He emphasized that this is a preparation measure rather than a response to any compromise, and said there is no evidence that AI has broken ECDSA, RSA or the core cryptography of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
