Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake urged the crypto industry to plan for a soācalled ābunker modeā: a calm, controlled migration of assets to fresh addresses whose public keys remain hidden behind a hash. Drake warned ECDSA ā the signature scheme used by Bitcoin and Ethereum ā could be compromised by AIādriven mathematical advances potentially arriving āin months not years.ā He pointed to a burst of AI research, citing 722 OpenAI results as an indicator that elliptic curves may be especially vulnerable.
Drake framed this as precaution rather than confirmation: nobody has proven ECDSA is broken. He recommended that large holders, wallets considered loadābearing, and custodians including Binance, Bitfinex, Tether, Bitbank, and Robinhood take the lead. Advice includes frequent key rotation, migration to unused addresses, and consideration of hashābased multiāsigning such as SPHINCS. He also highlighted tools like Project11ās risq list to track exposed BTC public keys and noted wallets holding under roughly 50 BTC enjoy partial protection, while about 20,000 addresses tied to Satoshi, each holding ~50 BTC, would likely be early targets. Drake warned against panic or a stampede, calling instead for deliberate coordination and said he will push to accelerate Ethereumās roadmap toward postāquantum, hashābased cryptography.