Vitalik Buterin lays out 'walkaway test' for a quantum safe Ethereum

Vitalik Buterin, a co-founder of Ethereum, laid out what he sees as the technical threshold for the blockchain to become truly self sustaining.

In a post on X dated Jan. 12, Buterin said Ethereum must pass a “walkaway test.” That means the protocol should be able to keep running safely and remain useful even if core developers stop shipping major upgrades.

He said Ethereum does not need to stop evolving. He said it needs to reach a point where it could ossify if it chose to.

Buterin called quantum resistance a top priority. He argued the protocol should aim to be cryptographically safe for decades and should not wait until a crisis forces rushed changes.

Quantum computing is a threat to cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology because it is faster and more powerful than traditional technology, exposing current encryption techniques, which rely on the amount of time it takes to break them for their strength.

Read more: Quantum computing threatens the $2 trillion Bitcoin network. BTQ Technologies says it has a defense.

He also listed several other areas he wants Ethereum to lock in.

One is scalability. The protocol needs an architecture that can reach many thousands of transactions per second, Buterin said. He pointed to ZK EVM validation and data sampling through PeerDAS as the path.

Another is state management that can handle higher throughput without making it harder for nodes to sync or store data. He also wants full account abstraction so Ethereum can move beyond enshrined ECDSA signatures. The elliptic curve digital signature algorithm is used, for example, to authenticate transactions on the blockchain.

Buterin said Ethereum should have a gas, or fees, schedule that is resistant to denial of service risks. He also flagged proof of stake economics and block building as long term pressure points. He said those parts of the system must resist centralization and protect censorship resistance.

His preferred end state is an Ethereum where most improvements come from client performance and parameter adjustments. He said the protocol should tick off at least one of these goals each year.