Ethereum RIP-7560 - The Time to Abstract All EOA's is Now
Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has outlined a potential emergency plan - known as Rollup Improvement Proposal (RIP)-7560 - to reverse the affects of a quantum hack where large-scale theft would occur across many wallets almost simultaneously. To quote Vitalik:
Supposed it is announced tomorrow that quantum computers are available. and bad actors already have access to them, and are able to use them to steal users' funds. Preventing such a scenario is the goal of quantum resistant cryptography (eg. Winternitz signatures, STARKS) and once account abstraction, a user can switch to using a quantum resistant scheme on their own schedule. But what if we don't have that much time and a sudden quantum transition happens long before that? I'd argue we're already well positioned to make a pretty simple recovery fork to deal with such a situation. The blockchain would have to hard fork and users would have to download updated wallet software but few users would lose their funds.
While we could debate the viability of performing a hard fork in the middle of arguably what would be the most chaotic and unpredictable event in the history of public blockchain technology, we find that speculative and of little value. We could also speculate as to the reasons why such a plan was not thought of nearly 3 years ago when we and others pointed to the analysis of cryptographic experts like Duncan Smith who in mid 2021 warned of a quantum attack strategy known as 'hack now decrypt later'. However, debates of this nature are also futile.
We boil everything down to one simple mantra that business leaders throughout human history began practicing well before the world's first computer was conceptualized. This mantra was found to be invaluable even before Einstein crafted the theory of relativity. What is it? Proactivity.
We ask Vitalik and all other blockchain engineers, enthusiasts, investors, and participants - why not be proactive while we still can and convert all EOA's to abstracted accounts using a batch proof STARK-of-STARKs method NOW and remove this 'black swan' event from the realm of possibilities? Why not make the Ethereum ecosystem and all Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible blockchains 'maximally ready' by ensuring it never happens to begin with?
Update 8/20/2024
I am happy to report RIP 7560 is a work in progress on Optimism Layer 2 Network. More to follow!
