a16z Crypto: The quantum threat is exaggerated; protocol governance and upgrade coordination are the biggest challenges for public blockchains.

PANews reported on January 25th that a16z Crypto published an analysis on its official account stating that market predictions of a "quantum computing threat to cryptocurrencies" are often exaggerated, and the probability of a quantum computer with real-world destructive power appearing before 2030 is extremely low. The article points out that mainstream digital signature schemes and zero-knowledge systems like zkSNARK are not easily vulnerable to "collect first, then crack" quantum attacks. Prematurely pushing blockchains to quantum-resistant solutions may introduce problems such as performance degradation, immature engineering, and potential security flaws.

a16z further emphasized that, compared to the still-developing quantum risks, the more realistic challenges currently facing mainstream public chains such as Bitcoin and Ethereum stem from the difficulty of coordinating protocol upgrades, governance complexity, and vulnerabilities in implementation-level code. He advised developers to plan quantum-resistant paths in advance based on a reasonable assessment of the time window, rather than hastily implementing migrations. He also pointed out that in the foreseeable future, traditional security issues such as code defects, side-channel attacks, and fault injection remain more worthy of priority resource investment than quantum computing, and that auditing, fuzzing, and formal verification should be strengthened as a key focus.