Cardano founder accused Ethereum co-founder of "taking over" due to AI cryptography warnings
Vitalik Buterin hopes that the crypto industry will prepare for a threat that does not yet exist. Charles Hoskinson believes that such preparation may be more harmful than the threat itself.
On October 8th, a co-founder of Ethereum warned that the accelerated mathematical research by AI could potentially break through lattice-based cryptography, which is the foundation for the new generation of post-quantum security standards. A few hours later, the founder of Cardano labeled this warning as "panicked" and accused Buterin of "taking over too much of the research in hash-based encryption."
Buterin started off calmly, stating that no one should “hurriedly transfer their funds to a new wallet today.” However, he believes that AI might soon discover hidden vulnerabilities in encryption algorithms that humans have overlooked for decades. He took RSA encryption as an example: it once seemed extremely difficult to crack, until years of research led to faster attack methods. “What if there are similar secrets?” he asked, referring to those vulnerabilities that “we are simply not smart enough to detect, but robots will discover quickly.”
He said that this concern is precisely the reason why the Ethereum lightweight roadmap has shifted to using only hash signatures. His suggestion is to prioritize the use of tools based on hashes; if long-term security is desired, then multiply the length of the secret key by 10.
Rebuttal
Hoskinson refuted this argument point by point:
- Has withstood the test of time for decades:Grid passwords have been subjected to attacks from top researchers in the field for 40 years, yet today's standards are designed to be robust enough to withstand such attacks.
- Hashes are not immune:MD5 and SHA-1 have both been breached. The Poseidon hash of Ethereum is so exceptionally regular in its mathematical structure that Ethereum Foundation even offered a bounty for vulnerabilities related to it.
- The “10x rule” is a form of “numerical divination”:If the attack capability is increased by 20%, the required key length increases by about 25%, rather than by 10 times.
“‘Structure’ doesn’t say much,” he wrote.
Real stakes
The biggest concerns lie outside of the encryption field. Browsers and messaging apps have already adopted grid-based ML-KEM to protect users from hacker attacks that involve first stealing encrypted data and then decrypting it later. He believes that questioning such technologies could lead to the continued use of older encryption methods for internet traffic, which is precisely the risk that Buterin wants to avoid.
He also rejected the idea proposed by Buterin to send encrypted notes off-chain through a third party, stating that this would only add an intermediary, and that intermediaries would be able to see the user's metadata.
He also questioned the past judgments of Buterin, stating that previous posts had led engineers away from ideas such as Plasma and Casper, only for the industry to return to these directions a few years later.
Neither of the two founders pointed out any actual occurrences of AI attacks. The question at hand is: should the crypto industry prepare for a potential breakthrough, or should we trust the defenses that have been in place for 40 years?
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