a16z Crypto: Cryptography Should Go Quantum-Resistant Early, Signatures Need Not Transition Early

BlockBeats News, January 25th, a16z Crypto published a long article titled "Quantum Computing and Blockchain: Aligning Immediacy with Realistic Threats," pointing out that the threat of quantum computing is severely polarized, and both excessive optimism and excessive concern are incorrect. Currently, publicly known quantum computing progress is far from being able to practically run the Shor algorithm to break RSA/ECDSA encryption, but the long-term risk cannot be completely ignored.

Quantum computing poses significantly different threat time windows to different cryptographic primitives. Encryption may be vulnerable to a "Harvest Now, Decrypt Later" (HNDL) attack, necessitating an early transition to post-quantum encryption. Signatures, on the other hand, are not easily susceptible to HNDL attacks. Prematurely migrating to post-quantum signatures may instead lead to performance degradation, immature implementations, and new risks such as code vulnerabilities, requiring a cautious transition strategy.