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Different chains use different cryptographic primitives, and breaking one doesn't necessarily mean all cryptography is broken tomorrow.
Even if there are chains which remain safe in this hypothetical scenario, it will get dragged down by the rest of the market. Nobody is going to think "OK, which crypto IS safe? so that I move my money to safe crypto?"
No, they will panic, and yell in unison "GET OUT OF CRYPTO, AI BROKE CRYPTO. YOUR MONEY IS NOT SAFE IN CRYPTO. WALLETS BEING DRAINED AS WE SPEAK."
So it doesn't matter if you've taken all the right steps to secure your funds/chain. If Bitcoin or ETH or some other chain gets pwned by AI, thats a black swan event and your coins are going down 50 to 99% quickly.
The problem I have with these hypotheticals is that they are impossible to disprove because they are based on unknowns. You can't prove there is something we don't know that AI is going to discover this unknown knowledge and pwn encryption as we know it. Its like saying, "Prove there isn't a meteor made out of an invisible new undiscovered element hurtling towards the earth right now to destroy it."
@untraceable: it's always and everywhere impossible to prove. That's why I emphasize the importance of alternatives here:
#340543
Agreed. I've been an advocate for holding precious metals for quite a while.
I think bunker mode is a reasonable intermediary precaution. Breaking ECDSA w/ a classical algorithm and breaking it w/ a quantum computer are two different problems, but that's the closest sibling of it I can think of.
For example, Solana's Winternitz Vault uses hash-based one-time signatures instead of Ed25519. This's primarily relevant to quantum resistance, since Shor's algorithm doesn't give you the same shortcut against hash functions that it does against elliptic curves.
Would it solve the hypothetical AI breakthrough Drake's talking about? IDK, depends on what exactly gets broken. But it shows we can experiment w/ alternatives today, even if they come w/ tradeoffs and aren't a drop-in replacement for existing wallets, stuff we have.
These breakthroughs may come crazy fast. I think "as soon as it was general knowledge that crypto is not safe, the entire market goes to zero overnight" is a bit too catastrophic an assumption. Different chains use different cryptographic primitives, and breaking one doesn't necessarily mean all cryptography is broken tomorrow. Some breaks could and probably will be partial, affecting certain schemes, implementations or use cases more than others.
I'd rather have vaults and stuff ready as potential alternatives, and migration paths we can actually use, than watch everything burn while we're figuring out what to do IMO :P
Kayaba Luke our dear Serai amateur cryptographer (his words IIRC, not mine) would be the guy to ask such question.
Just today I was watching MikroTik software update video, saw that they included support for hybrid post quantum key exchange for SSH. Took a note. I'll check this topic further and will probably swap my keys, we'll see.
https://stasher.news/uploads/714
https://youtu.be/ZUjiBTaltvQ original ↗
My thoughts on all these aren't mature thought TBH.