‘Bunker mode’ won’t protect your crypto, critics say

Critics argue that the "bunker mode" suggestion, proposed by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, is impractical and unlikely to protect crypto assets. Drake's warning is based on concerns that AI could potentially break cryptography, either by accelerating the discovery of mathematical attacks or by helping human cryptographers uncover hidden vulnerabilities.

However, experts remain skeptical about the likelihood of such a scenario. While Drake suggests planning a controlled migration of assets to fresh addresses, Coinbase's head of cryptography Yehuda Lindell maintains that there is no evidence that the mathematical assumptions underpinning elliptic curve cryptography have been weakened.

Similarly, Bitcoin analyst Lucien Bourdon asserts that there are no credible published advances against the math behind ECDSA, neither through AI nor any other method. Furthermore, hardware wallet manufacturers like Trezor and FoundationHQ emphasize that moving funds to new addresses may not be sufficient if an extended public key has already been shared, as attackers could still derive the corresponding public keys.

Ethereum wallet MetaMask cautions that if cryptography is broken, it could have far-reaching consequences beyond just the loss of individual crypto assets, as the entire financial world could be impacted. Experts like Eli Ben-Sasson of StarkWare emphasize that a break in ECDSA would require more than just moving coins, as it could affect Ethereum's infrastructure-level signatures, consensus mechanisms, and data in blobs.

Therefore, while Drake's warning may have raised alarm within the crypto community, the consensus among experts is that the idea of a "bunker mode" is an impractical solution that could do more harm than good.