Ethereum researcher urges gradual crypto wallet precautions

Ethereum researcher Justin Drake has urged cryptocurrency users and institutions to prepare for a possible future threat to wallet security from artificial intelligence, recommending a gradual move of funds to fresh addresses whose public keys have not been exposed. He said an effective attack on the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) could arrive in a worst-case scenario within months, but no such attack has been demonstrated. Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, said recent advances in AI-generated mathematics had prompted him to reconsider how long elliptic-curve cryptography might remain secure. OpenAI published new mathematical results on October 6. Drake cited the progress as a reason to consider whether AI might help discover a way to recover private keys from exposed public keys, potentially before quantum computers can do so. The months-not-years timeline is Drake’s worst-case warning, not a forecast based on a demonstrated capability. The published mathematical results do not establish that wallet cryptography has been broken, and the available reporting does not identify a specific result that provides a practical attack on ECDSA.