Cardano's founder Charles Hoskinson has lashed out at Ethereum's co-founder Vitalik Buterin over the latter's recent claims about the possible destabilization of current cryptography by artificial intelligence.
In his long post on X, the Cardano founder labeled Vitalik's statements as a series of baseless fears about lattice cryptography, which is one of the main components of the current post-quantum security paradigm.
This particular post was a response to Buterin's statement about the possibility of significant destabilization of lattice cryptography within the next two years due to the quickening pace of AI-based mathematical discovery.
He believed that artificial intelligence might help in discovering new mathematical shortcuts that could nullify all security assumptions.
Yet, in his response, Cardano's creator denounced Buterin's statements as highly speculative. He also criticized Ethereum's co-founder for the lack of mathematical substantiation of his views.
The Cardano co-founder noted that lattice cryptography has been subject to deep research and rigorous testing for decades. Moreover, in all those years, researchers have been constantly refining their security assumptions by incorporating new information about attack methods.
Hoskinson also warned that the stance Buterin is trying to take might cause grave harm to the whole cybersecurity industry.
Disincentivizing people from using lattice cryptography could be a negative factor in all the ongoing activities aimed at securing communication on the Internet from future quantum computers.
Also, seeding doubts about the security of lattice cryptography could hamper the overall transition from classical cryptography, which could endanger any sensitive information that might be compromised in the future.
Buterin sounds alarm about AI threat
This tense debate happened shortly after prominent Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned the crypto community about an impending security disaster he termed “bunker mode.”
As reported by U.Today, Drake claims that artificial intelligence might one day be capable of undermining the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA), the dominant method for authorizing crypto transactions.
Drake believes that if a mathematical breakthrough were powerful enough, it could allow the extraction of private keys from exposed public keys in much less time than currently expected.
Later, Vitalik Buterin supported Justin Drake's view, saying that AI could make mathematical research progress at a truly unprecedented rate.
However, the Ethereum co-founder explicitly advised crypto holders against making any rash decisions and transferring their funds elsewhere.