Morning Minute: Ethereum Prepares for the Quantum Era

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack.

GM!

Today’s top news:

• Crypto majors red despite Gold hitting $5,100 & new ATH; BTC at $87,600
• Ethereum Foundation forms Post-Quantum team to upgrade Ethereum
• UBS to start offering Bitcoin and ETH to its wealthy clients
• RIVER token soars 38% on day, 180% on week and jumps into top 50
• Nifty Gateway announces wind down, 30 days for holders to get NFTs off its platform

🛡️ Ethereum Prepares for the Quantum Era

Crypto’s biggest looming risk is quantum.

And Ethereum is formally preparing its response.

📌 What Happened

The Ethereum Foundation has formed a dedicated post-quantum security team, formally elevating quantum resistance to a top strategic priority for the network.

The new Post-Quantum (PQ) team was announced by Ethereum researcher Justin Drake, who described the move as an inflection point after years of research and quiet development.

The effort will be led by cryptographic engineer Thomas Coratger, with contributors from the leanVM team, which Drake called a cornerstone of Ethereum’s long-term cryptographic strategy.

Ethereum’s current security model, like Bitcoin’s, relies on elliptic-curve cryptography. Researchers widely believe sufficiently powerful quantum computers could eventually break these systems, creating risks for transaction signatures, wallets, and long-term data security.

The Foundation says the focus is now shifting from theoretical work to practical execution, including wallet safety, account abstraction, transaction design, and new testing environments.

🗣️ What They’re Saying

“After years of quiet R&D, EF management has officially declared PQ (Post Quantum) security a top strategic priority. Our journey began in 2019, with the “Eth3.0 Quantum Security” presentation at StarkWare Sessions. Since 2024, PQ has been central to the Ethereum vision. The pace of PQ engineering breakthroughs since then has been nothing short of phenomenal.

It’s now 2026, timelines are accelerating. Time to go full PQ” – Justin Drake, on X

🧠 Why It Matters

Many crypto thought leaders have posited that now is the time to prepare for the eventual post-quantum reality.

Timelines have shifted from 2050+ to the 2030s.

And as we all know, AI developments are accelerating so no timeline is super safe.

Bitcoin devs have talked about this issue in circles but have no formal plans to address quantum risk (i.e. what happens if Satoshi’s wallet is hacked and his 1.1M Bitcoin worth roughly $100B are sold).

Now Ethereum has a formal mechanism in place to plan, execute and ship fixes to address quantum risks.

In this respect, Ethereum is stronger than Bitcoin.

And if they make real progress and ship solutions over the next few years to make Ethereum quantum-resistant or even quantum-proof, while Bitcoin lags – then expect ETH to make real gains on Bitcoin.

I personally thought there was no real path for ETH to flip Bitcoin. Quantum readiness might actually be that path. It’s very low likelihood, but it’s nonzero.

Now the ball is in the Bitcoin devs’ court…

🌎 Macro Crypto and Markets

A few headlines that stood out:

• Crypto majors are red after a Sunday selloff, down 6-10% on the week; BTC -1% at $87,600; ETH -1% at $2,897, SOL -3% at $122; XRP -1% to $1.89
• RIVER (+38%), ALGO (+4%) and MORPHO (+4%) led top movers
• Gold hit $5,100 overnight, breaking $5k for the first time while Silver hit $110
• GameFi tokens surged led by Axie Infinity, which jumped more than 130% in a week
• Ethereum Foundation formed a dedicated post-quantum security team, elevating quantum-resistant cryptography to a top strategic priority
• ZachXBT exposed the theft of $40M in crypto from a US government wallet allegedly by the son of the man in charge
• CertiK said it is planning a U.S. IPO, positioning itself as a pure-play crypto security firm
• UBS Group announced plans to offer Bitcoin and Ethereum trading to select wealthy clients
• MoonPay signed an eight-figure, three-year title sponsorship deal with the X Games, launching the “MoonPay X Games League”

In Corporate Treasuries / ETFs

• The BTC ETFs saw $1.7B in net outflows last week in total, one of the largest outflow weeks ever
• ETHZilla announced the purchase of jet engines after selling some of its ETH

In Memes / Onchain Movers

• Meme majors were mostly red, closing a -3-5% week; Doge -1%, Shiba -1%, PEPE -2%, TRUMP -1%, Bonk -1%, Pengu -2%, SPX -5%, WIF -4% and Fartcoin -14%
• PENGUIN was the runner of the weekend, hitting $160M before retracing to $90M; CLAWD was another, running from 0 to $10M
• WOJAK (+69%), SURGE (+30%), SOL (+35%) and WhiteWhale (+32%) were other notable movers

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• River jumped 180% on the week, now at $8B fdv
• Moonbirds announced their BIRB TGE for Jan 28
• Infinex shared that the final Patrons snapshot will take place at 7 am UTC this Friday (Jan 30) ahead of their TGE

🚚 What is happening in NFTs?

• NFT leaders were mixed; Punks +6% at 28.88 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 4.72 ETH, and BAYC -1% at 6.18 ETH; Hypurr -2% at 485 HYPE
• Del Mundos (+43%) and Moonbirds (+5%) led notable top movers
• Nifty Gateway announced it is winding down operations and that anyone holding NFTs on their platform has 1 month to get them off