TechFlow News, March 25: According to DL News, the Ethereum Foundation officially released its post-quantum upgrade roadmap on Tuesday, aiming to complete the initial Layer 1 protocol upgrades by 2029, with the full execution-layer migration rolling out over subsequent years.
The roadmap centers around four key hard forks: The “I” fork will equip network validators with quantum-resistant public keys; the “J” fork aims to reduce the gas costs required to verify quantum-resistant signatures. Both of these upgrades have been included as candidate proposals for the Hegota fork, expected later this year. The “L” fork will compress the blockchain state into zero-knowledge proofs; the “M” fork will provide quantum resistance specifically for Layer 2 networks.
The Ethereum Foundation stated that quantum computing will ultimately break the current public-key cryptography underpinning ownership, identity verification, and consensus mechanisms—but noted that quantum computers capable of posing a cryptographic threat are still estimated to be 8–12 years away. The Foundation formed a dedicated quantum research team in January this year and emphasized that “this work must begin before the threat materializes.”
