Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has called on the crypto industry to begin preparing for "bunker mode," warning that artificial intelligence could find a way to break the mathematics protecting bitcoin and ether wallets in the worst case "in months, not years."
"Today I call upon the blockchain industry to calmly start planning for 'bunker mode,'" Drake wrote on X on Wednesday, urging large holders to begin a gradual move of their funds to fresh addresses whose public keys have never appeared onchain.
A wallet uses a secret number, called a private key, to authorize payments. A related public key lets the network check those approvals. Generating the public key is easy, but working backward from it to the secret is supposed to take an impractical amount of computing work. Drake's concern is that AI may help someone find a shortcut, letting an attacker recover the secret and spend the coins on ordinary computers, with no need for the quantum machines the industry has been preparing for.
Millions of bitcoin sit in addresses whose public keys are already visible onchain, as CoinDesk has previously reported. On Ethereum, any account that has ever sent a transaction has revealed its key, and the stablecoins and tokenized funds issued on the network are controlled through that signature system as well. No practical attack on bitcoin or Ethereum's wallet keys has been demonstrated, and none appeared in the research reviewed by CoinDesk.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said AI could also weaken some quantum-resistant cryptography, though he cautioned that rushed wallet migrations can cause losses.
