AI Is Accelerating the Quantum Timeline, Researchers Warn Crypto Networks to Prepare

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NEAR Protocol has announced plans to integrate post-quantum cryptography directly into its account infrastructure, as researchers warn that artificial intelligence is speeding up quantum computing development faster than previously assumed and narrowing the window for crypto networks to upgrade their encryption. Project Eleven CEO Alex Pruden and NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin both say existing encryption standards may not hold as quantum hardware becomes more capable.

Project Eleven and NEAR Protocol Researchers Warn AI Is Accelerating Quantum Development

Pruden, whose firm focuses on quantum-resistant infrastructure, said AI and quantum computing together are changing the security requirements for all digital systems. Pruden stated: 

“Between quantum and AI, we’re going to go into a world where security, and this is more broadly than just crypto, you simply cannot count on the way you’ve always done things.”

Polosukhin, a former Google AI researcher, said AI has been accelerating scientific discovery for years and that the pace is increasing. “The rate of research is going to accelerate from here, and we have already seen progress that people didn’t expect would come this early,” he said. He pointed to his time at Google in 2016, when machine learning systems were already being used to discover new materials. Polosukhin described the dynamic as self-reinforcing, saying, “It might be that the next generation quantum computer will be built with AI and quantum computers of this generation. It’s feeding into itself.”

Researchers Flag “Harvest Now, Decrypt Later” as an Active and Growing Risk

Researchers say the most immediate concern is not a quantum computer breaking encryption today, but the strategy of collecting encrypted data now with the intention of decrypting it once sufficiently powerful quantum hardware becomes available. “If I know quantum computers are coming in a couple of years, I will start trying to capture all possible data that’s going around,” Polosukhin said. Offering his personal estimate of the timeline, he added: 

“Everything we’re putting on the internet, if you’re identifiable as a person of interest, you can assume will be decrypted in two years. It’s most likely happening already.”

Bitcoin and Ethereum rely on elliptic curve cryptography, the same standard used across much of the broader internet. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could theoretically derive private keys from public keys, allowing attackers to access wallets and systems, researchers say. 

Pruden also described AI as an independent attack vector, saying machine learning systems are capable of identifying software vulnerabilities and implementation flaws: 

“I would expect the advent of AI to accelerate even more hacks. You have these AI models that are able to find either implementation bugs in the underlying cryptography or increasingly, I think, break the cryptography itself.”

Several Blockchain Networks Are Actively Researching Post-Quantum Migration Strategies

Polosukhin said NEAR, Ethereum, Zcash, Solana, and Ripple are among the blockchain ecosystems researching post-quantum migration strategies. NEAR’s planned integration will allow users to rotate cryptographic schemes without migrating assets to entirely new wallets. 

Polosukhin also said the design decision dates to the protocol’s early development. “Back in 2018, when we were designing NEAR, we were like: ‘Hey, quantum will come, we should have an easy way to do it,'” he said.

Post-Quantum Cryptography Carries Significant Performance Costs, Researchers Say

Post-quantum cryptographic systems present real engineering challenges for networks that prioritize throughput and efficiency. “The cryptography that’s currently standardized for post-quantum is very big and slow,” Polosukhin said. 

Pruden said AI could also play a defensive role in managing that transition, supporting formal verification of post-quantum systems, stating: “AI can help with formal verification of post-quantum systems. That theoretically makes them more secure.” 

He added that the broader security environment will no longer allow for static infrastructure assumptions. “Nothing is going to be as static as it’s been in the future,” Pruden said. “Either a quantum computer comes online to break some fundamental assumption, or AI gets smart enough to break that assumption too.”