Vitalik Buterin thinks the cryptography protecting your private messages isn’t quite finished yet. In a post on X, the Ethereum co-founder said public-key cryptography may need one or two more parameter upgrades before it settles into long-term stability.
What Buterin actually said
The post, shared on October 7, 2026, focused on lattice-based cryptography. This is a family of encryption and signature schemes built on hard geometric problems involving grids of points in many dimensions.
Buterin’s concern is a different adversary: artificial intelligence. He pointed to rapid progress in AI-driven mathematics and suggested it could significantly weaken key lattice schemes, including ML-DSA and Falcon, within two years.
His proposed hedge is blunt. To protect public-key encryption, particularly in uses outside blockchain such as secure messaging and VPNs, he suggested increasing lattice key sizes by a factor of ten.
Why hashes alone can’t do the job
Buterin was clear that he prefers hash-based cryptography when security is the priority. That preference already shows up in Ethereum’s plans. The roadmap known as Lean Ethereum has leaned on hash-based signatures such as WOTS and SPHINCS+, reducing reliance on primitives viewed as more vulnerable.
Buterin acknowledged that public-key encryption cannot rest on hashes alone, because it needs mathematical structures that work as trapdoors. Building that kind of object requires structured math, like lattices or code-based systems, which hashes don’t provide.
Calm, not panic
Buterin cautioned against overreacting. His practical advice for users was modest. He recommended using fresh addresses for ECDSA signatures, the elliptic-curve scheme that secures most Ethereum accounts today. He also advised favoring off-chain confirmations for multisig transactions, the shared wallets that require several approvals before funds move.
Where this fits in Ethereum’s roadmap
Next on the calendar is the Hegotá upgrade, scheduled for 2027. Hegotá is expected to be the last major update that early Ethereum users would still recognize. After that, the network is anticipated to move toward more advanced designs built to be quantum-safe and AI-resilient, along with recursive STARKs.
Not everyone is convinced
Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson pushed back. He expressed skepticism about the need for drastic parameter increases when there is no concrete evidence that lattice schemes are actually vulnerable.
What this means
Buterin specifically flagged secure messaging and VPNs as areas where public-key encryption cannot simply swap to hashes. Those systems are where lattice-based post-quantum encryption is being adopted, and they would bear the cost of any key-size increase.
The key things to track are any published attacks or improvements against ML-DSA or Falcon, whether standards bodies respond to calls for larger parameters, and how Hegotá’s 2027 rollout shapes Ethereum’s transition.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.