Ethereum has done more reading about PQC than any other chain and more ECDSA signing than any other chain, in the same week. The Foundation's pq.ethereum.org hub and Vitalik's February 2026 roadmap live inside the same 1.2 million BLS12-381 validator set. On paper it is ready. On mainnet it is 2015.
Summary
Ethereum has the strongest PQC research program and the weakest execution gap in crypto: Vitalik's Feb 2026 4-year roadmap, Thomas Coratger's $2M-funded research team, pq.ethereum.org hub, and weekly PQ interop devnets — but zero mainnet PQC code and EIP-8141 only at CFI status (not a Hegotá headliner). AA primitives (ERC-4337 + EIP-7702) are the migration substrate; the technical path exists. Danger zone is real: X+Y (13-35y) >> Z_10pct (10y).
What the gates say
- Hybrid: PASS. Hybrid-PQ design present.
- Evidence: PASS. Sources reconstructable by third party.
- Primitive naming: PASS. Named primitives at every scored sub-level.
Burn-vs-rescue policy on file
hybrid-client (Vitalik Feb 2026 roadmap + ethresear.ch STARK-based rescue proposal + AA migration path; not formally ratified)
Seven dimensions
Each dimension scores 0-100 internally; the weighted roll-up produces the QRI on the left. Open a row to read the sub-score detail.
1 Cryptographic Exposure 42 / 100
Complete primitive inventory published by Ethereum Foundation.
ECDSA secp256k1 (EOA signatures) · BLS12-381 (consensus, ~1.2M validators) · Keccak-256 (hashing) · KZG/Groth16 (blob data, L2 proofs)Zero PQC family deployed on mainnet. All cryptographic primitives are classically-hard, quantum-breakable.
2 HNDL Exposure 15 / 100
~95-100% of EOA pubkeys exposed on first transaction. Highest HNDL surface in crypto due to largest TVL/active addresses.
120 months mainnet age, largest dormant supply ecosystem, institutional cold-storage (BlackRock, Coinbase, Anchorage) all classical.
All historical ECDSA + BLS12-381 signatures forgeable post-Shor. Archive nodes contain 10+ years of exposed signatures.
Standard TLS; no PQC KEM in devp2p or libp2p node comms.
3 Metadata & Privacy Exposure 18 / 100
Fully transparent ledger; largest tx graph in crypto.
Infura (Consensys), Alchemy, Flashbots — heavy RPC concentration.
Largest bridge ecosystem: LayerZero, Wormhole, Circle CCTP, canonical L2 bridges all correlate addresses.
ZK proofs (Tornado Cash, Aztec historical, Railgun) built on BN254/BLS12-381 — Shor-breakable, enabling retroactive deanon of shielded sets.
4 Migration Architecture 62 / 100
EIP-7702 (Pectra, May 2025) + ERC-4337 account abstraction live on mainnet. AA enables per-account signature migration without hard fork. EIP-8141 proposed for native PQC off-ramp.
ERC-4337 + EIP-7702 enable arbitrary signature validation logic. Smart accounts can migrate to Falcon/ML-DSA/SLH-DSA via verifier contracts once deployed.
Smooth track record: The Merge (Sep 2022), Shanghai (Apr 2023), Dencun (Mar 2024), Pectra (May 2025). No contested forks since DAO (2016). Fusaka upcoming.
Foundation endorses hybrid-by-default via AA (Vitalik Feb 2026 roadmap, Coratger/Burdges pq.ethereum.org). No mainnet hybrid code shipped yet; EIP-8141 CFI status for Hegotá (not headliner).
5 Deployment Execution 18 / 100
Zero PQC on mainnet as of April 2026. Mosca cap triggers.
PQC research code in separate repos (pq.ethereum.org). Devnet code exists (>10 consumer groups running weekly PQ interop devnets). No PQC merged into go-ethereum/reth/erigon mainnet branches.
All ~1.2M validators use BLS12-381. Zero PQC validators.
Published milestones: (1) Vitalik 4-year roadmap Feb 2026, (2) pq.ethereum.org hub Mar 2026, (3) $2M Coratger-led research, (4) EIP-8141 CFI, (5) weekly PQ interop devnets. No mainnet PQC code.
High announcements-to-shipped ratio: major PR push (Vitalik, EF blog, coindesk) vs zero mainnet code. Genuine research backing but execution lag.
6 Supply Chain Vendor Readiness 10 / 100
7 Governance & Coordination 62 / 100
~1.2M validators, largest set in crypto. Lido ~27% concentration is primary risk.
Reliable hard-fork cadence; Pectra delivered May 2025. EIP-8141 on CFI shows live PQ process.
Named leads: Vitalik Buterin, Thomas Coratger (PQC research), Justin Drake, Dankrad Feist, Jeff Burdges (pq.ethereum.org). Multi-client culture.
DAO fork 2016 proves contentious coordination possible. Lido governance theatre mixed signal. No precedent for emergency cryptographic migration.
The X + Y vs Z inequality
X (data shelf life): 5-20 (EOA pubkeys exposed first tx; validator BLS long-term)
Y (migration time): 8-15 (1.2M validators + AA rollout + client coordination)
Z10 (10% CRQC year): 2036 · Z50 (50%): 2041
Verdict: X+Y > Z (danger).
Four-scenario grid
| Scenario | Value preserved | Privacy preserved |
|---|---|---|
| quantum never | 100% | 100% |
| arrives suddenly pre migration | 15% | 5% |
| arrives slowly post migration | 70% | 40% |
| arrives slowly mid migration | 45% | 20% |
Peers in the L1 profile
Order-book view of the 9 chains closest to Ethereum by QRI.
Public artifacts used for this scorecard
Each entry below is a sub-score citation. Clicking the link takes you to the public source. A third party should be able to reconstruct every number on this page from these URLs in 48 hours.
Complete primitive inventory published by Ethereum Foundation.
No NIST PQC category on mainnet.
Zero PQC on mainnet as of April 2026. Mosca cap triggers.
Supply chain snapshot
A chain's supply chain cannot migrate faster than its slowest dependency. Zero PQC roadmaps in any of the four categories is a structural blocker, not a lagging indicator.
Analyst notes on the scoring
Highest pqc_washing ratio in batch (4.5) reflects high-visibility Foundation announcements vs. zero mainnet shipping. Migration Architecture score (62) is the highest in batch thanks to AA; offset by Deployment Execution (18) and Supply Chain (10). Gates: all three PASS. Mosca cap (5a=0%) enforces ceiling.
Scorecard metadata
- Profile: L1
- Scored: 2026-04-18 by
layerqu-v2-scoring-agent-2 - v1 reference:
chainscreen-v1-archive - QRI raw: 26 · after caps: 26
- Confidence interval: ±5
- PQC washing ratio: 4.5x
- Burn-vs-rescue: hybrid-client (Vitalik Feb 2026 roadmap + ethresear.ch STARK-based rescue proposal + AA migration path; not formally ratified)
Caps triggered
- mosca_cap_60 (5a=0, below threshold)
- sutor_cap_50 (5d=7, 5 milestones but no mainnet code — partial trigger)