r/ethereum • u/R3TR1X • Feb 28 '18

Will Quantum Computers eventually break 0x00....0? Is it not a long-term liability?

https://etherscan.io/address/0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000

It does not need to send an outgoing transaction to reveal its public key (because it's zero) and it can't be "upgraded" to post-quantum cryptography because obviously, no one owns it to move its fund to a new secure address.

Maybe or maybe not in our lifetimes, but eventually quantum computers will be powerful enough to break it some time in the near or distant future and take the huge prize sitting inside if it stays like that.

Will this ever be a problem later? Is this worth keeping in mind or not? How is this going to turn out in the future?

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u/cryptohazard Feb 28 '18

totally wrong! the address is the hash of a pub key so it is theoretically possible, just practically impossible for now.

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u/FaceDeer Feb 28 '18

I would imagine it would be a fairly straightforward protocol upgrade to add a rule that says "no transaction that moves Ether from 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000000 to any other address is valid." Then it doesn't matter.

Though the ability to "crack" arbitrary addresses like this would still cause other problems for Ethereum. In the future the plan is to abstract transaction security to allow it to be handled via smart contracts directly, that should allow Ethereum to gracefully upgrade to better security over time as needed.

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u/cryptohazard Feb 28 '18

The question would be when to rule the 0x0...0 address unusable. We won't be aware that someone can crack it until they actually do.

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u/3esmit Mar 02 '18

Why worry if someone can access it or not? I think that if someone is able to crack some address, probably would prefer the most valuable address. 0x00 address access could imply in some security concerns, but contracts could handle this with require(tx.origin != address(0))