The non-profit organization Ethereum Foundation has unveiled a roadmap for protecting the network against quantum computers. The plan includes four hard forks.

Today, several teams at the EF are launching https://t.co/L9ZOUoRNNB, a dedicated resource for Ethereum's post-quantum security effort.

What started with early STARK-based signature aggregation research in 2018 has grown into a coordinated, multi-team effort, all open source.…

— Ethereum Foundation (@ethereumfndn) March 24, 2026

Developers estimate that "cryptographically significant" devices will not emerge for at least eight to twelve years. However, preparations must begin now.

“Quantum computing will ultimately break public key cryptography, which secures ownership, authentication, and consensus across all digital systems. Work must start long before the threat becomes a reality,” the foundation stated.

The Ethereum Foundation's research team proposed four key updates:

  1. Fork I will provide network validators with a public key that can be activated in the event of a sudden quantum computer emergence.
  2. Fork J will reduce gas costs for verifying secure signatures.
  3. Fork L will implement state compression using zero-knowledge proofs to compactly package blockchain state and signature data.
  4. Fork M will protect L2 networks from future quantum threats.

Developers are considering the first two updates for inclusion in the upcoming Hegota hard fork, expected this year.

Level Updates and Implementation Timeline

The transition will affect all three protocol levels:

  • Execution level will enable quantum-safe authentication through account abstraction without mandatory updates;
  • Consensus level will replace the validators' signature scheme (BLS) with post-quantum alternatives, particularly hash signatures (leanXMSS). PQ signatures lack the native aggregation properties of BLS, so a SNARK aggregation approach using minimal zkVM (leanVM) is being developed;
  • Data storage level will ensure post-quantum security for processing BLOB objects.

The Ethereum team aims to complete the network overhaul by 2029. However, full migration will take several more years.

Recall that in late February, co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced a major update to encryption algorithms and transaction verification methods. All changes are aimed at protecting Ethereum from quantum threats.