AI is speeding up the quantum threat to crypto, security experts warn

“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,” he added. “It’s most likely happening already.”

The implications for crypto are especially severe because most blockchain networks rely on the same elliptic curve cryptography used across the broader internet. A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could theoretically derive private keys from public keys, allowing attackers to compromise vulnerable wallets and systems.

But researchers increasingly argue the bigger story is not quantum alone, it is the combination of quantum computing and AI creating a permanent security arms race.

Artificial intelligence is already becoming increasingly effective at identifying software vulnerabilities and implementation flaws. “I would expect the advent of AI to accelerate… even more hacks,” Pruden said. “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.”

At the same time, developers are deploying AI defensively for code auditing, testing and formal verification, mathematical techniques used to prove software behaves as intended. “AI can help with formal verification of post-quantum systems,” Pruden said. “That theoretically makes them more secure.”

The result, researchers say, is a future where security can no longer be treated as static infrastructure that gets upgraded once every decade. “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.”

That shift is already beginning to force blockchain networks to rethink how quickly they can evolve. Several ecosystems, including Ethereum, Zcash, Solana, Ripple and NEAR, are actively researching or implementing post-quantum migration strategies.

NEAR recently announced plans to integrate post-quantum cryptography directly into its account infrastructure, allowing users to rotate cryptographic schemes without migrating assets to entirely new wallets. “Back in 2018, when we were designing [NEAR], we were like: ‘Hey, quantum will come, we should have an easy way to do it,’” Polosukhin said.

Still, the transition remains technically difficult. Post-quantum cryptographic systems are often significantly larger and slower than current standards. “The cryptography that’s currently standardized for post-quantum is very big and slow,” Polosukhin said.

The broader implication, according to researchers, is that both AI and quantum computing are undermining a foundational assumption of the digital age: that encryption remains reliable for long periods.

Instead, security may increasingly become an adaptive, continuously evolving process, in which systems must constantly upgrade just to survive.

Read more: Here's how bitcoin, Ethereum and other networks are preparing for the looming quantum threat