Ethereum Can Reduce Account Quantum-Resistant Protection Costs to 7 Cents

Ethereum is reviewing a method to add quantum-resistant protection to accounts without requiring a hard fork. According to a report by blockchain media Coin Telegraph, Nicolas Consigny, head of the Kokhaku Project at the Ethereum Foundation, proposed reducing the cost of account protection to 0.07 USD. Consigny introduced SPHINCS-, an optimized version of the quantum-resistant signature standard SPHINCS+ tailored for Ethereum, which focuses on lowering on-chain verification costs without protocol changes or precompiles. The proposal addresses concerns about the long-term quantum computing vulnerability of existing elliptic curve digital signature algorithms, offering a middle-step solution before a dedicated hard fork. While quantum computing threats remain in early stages, experiments are ongoing, with Project Eleven awarding a prize to researcher Jarno Lähteeniemi for decrypting a 15-bit elliptic curve key using a modified Shor's algorithm. Bitcoin's potential exposure is also highlighted, as Glassnode classifies 1.92 million BTC (10% of supply) as structurally unsafe under future quantum attack scenarios and 4.12 million BTC (20.6% of supply) as operationally unsafe due to key and address management issues.