Ethereum Foundation shifts strategy, drops Poseidon from quantum-resistant roadmap
Recent breakthroughs in compact cryptographic proofs have eliminated the performance edge that Poseidon once held, says Justin Drake from the research team.
A strategic shift is underway at the Ethereum Foundation regarding its post-quantum cryptographic architecture, with the organization stepping back from the Poseidon hash function, researcher Justin Drake has revealed.
Speaking on Thursday, Drake announced that the foundation is pivoting away from Poseidon and instead embracing well-established alternatives including SHA or BLAKE. Hash functions serve the critical purpose of transforming data into fixed-length digital fingerprints, providing computers with a mechanism to verify that information remains unmodified.
The Poseidon hash function had been under consideration for integration into future quantum-resistant systems, including leanVM, a solution designed to enable Ethereum to verify substantial quantities of blockchain transactions with greater efficiency. However, these systems have yet to see deployment on the mainnet environment.
According to Drake, recent developments in SNARK technology—which refers to compact cryptographic proofs that enable the confirmation of computations without requiring the repetition of the original work—have enabled traditional hash functions to achieve performance levels sufficient to supplant Poseidon in the planned system architecture.
Drake indicated that a production-ready version of leanVM is being targeted for release in 2027, with subsequent rollouts planned across Ethereum's consensus layer, data layer, and execution layer throughout 2028. However, he emphasized that these timeline projections remain subject to change.
Sreeram Kannan, who serves as founder and CEO of Eigen Labs, noted that established hash-based cryptographic systems present fewer identified attack vectors compared to alternative post-quantum methodologies and have the potential for more rapid deployment given their extensive history of security analysis and peer review.
Kannan further disclosed that collaborative efforts involving the foundation alongside zero-knowledge proof company Succinct have yielded a 2.5-fold improvement in proving speed performance.