Post-quantum Ethereum, Fast Confirmation Rule & more - The Daily Gwei Refuel #862 - Ethereum Updates

Post-quantum resistance was described by Dan D'Ossino as the most critical issue facing Ethereum over the next few years, with the warning that a protocol lacking quantum security could be attacked and effectively killed. The Ethereum Foundation launched a dedicated website at pq.ethereum.org to consolidate and communicate all ongoing work in this area. Will, one of the leads of the Lean Ethereum effort, presented Ethereum's post-quantum strategy at the Institutional Ethereum Forum in New York City on March 24th, an event where David Wolkjaff of the Ethereum Foundation noted that 250 trillion dollars in combined assets were represented among attendees including BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, PayPal, Stripe, Visa, Aave, Uniswap, and ConsenSys. Vivek from Etherealize argued that post-quantum security is non-negotiable for institutions rather than optional, given that large institutions operate on yearly and decade-long timelines and require long-term security assurance before committing serious capital.

Bitcoin was described as having a very low chance of achieving full quantum security due to how its protocol is architected, with early Bitcoin addresses holding large amounts of BTC potentially vulnerable to quantum attacks and some in the Bitcoin community still denying the issue exists. BSC and Tron, as EVM chains, could likely adopt post-quantum work done by Ethereum, while Solana would have to implement quantum security independently. D'Ossino stated that all core Ethereum protocol work going forward must be compatible with post-quantum designs, and that starting early ensures the full roadmap plays well with quantum-resistant architecture.

The fast confirmation rule allows single-slot confirmations within 13 seconds that are similar to but not strictly equivalent to finality, and critically does not require a hard fork or core protocol change. A website called fastconfirm.it was launched to explain the rule. If exchanges adopted it, deposit crediting could fall from the current average of six minutes worth of block confirmations to 13 seconds. If Arbitrum One and Base both adopted it, native interoperability and atomic transactions between them could theoretically occur within 13 seconds. The caveat is that transactions remain unprotected from reversion approximately one percent of the time, and adoption depends entirely on exchanges, L2s, and bridges choosing to implement it. The speaker characterized the fast confirmation rule as a stopgap until fast finality, which requires a hard fork, is implemented. A multi-slot variant waiting four or five slots, roughly one minute, remains an option but is considered less attractive.

The Ethereum Foundation had its first validator index assigned on March 20th as part of a plan to stake up to 70,000 ETH, and had staked 62,000 ETH at the time of recording. Total ETH staked sits at approximately 38.2 million, about 1.5 million below the all-time high of 39.8 million. The staking entry queue peaked at 71 days in February and has since declined from approximately 4.1 million ETH to nearly 3 million ETH. The speaker believes Ethereum has been overpaying for security and is hitting diminishing returns at current staking levels.

EtherFi overtook Coinbase to become the third-largest staking provider, with Coinbase falling to fourth after losing 28 percent of its staked ETH over six months. EtherFi grew 10 percent over the same period, partly because it incorporates restaking to offer higher yields. Lido remains dominant but its market share fell from 33 percent to around 23.2 percent, while Binance holds second place at 8.7 percent. Blockdaemon saw the largest inflow at 33 percent, Kraken gained 7 percent, and Rocket Pool and Kiln saw outflows of 22 percent and 60 percent respectively, with Kiln's decline attributed to a security incident.

Ethereum Foundation researcher Soy Spoke has been working on private swaps on Ethereum L1, identifying that current privacy protocol users depend on broadcasters who can see, front-run, and censor their transactions. Four planned protocol upgrades would progressively eliminate this dependency. Native account abstraction and two-day nonces allow users to self-submit transactions with no off-chain infrastructure. Encrypted frame transactions, building on EIP 8141, hide swap parameters until after block ordering is committed. The inclusion protocol Fossil guarantees transaction inclusion as long as one honest includer can see the transaction in the public mempool. Native account abstraction and Fossil are already planned for Ethereum, while the encrypted frame transaction EIP is described as controversial because critics believe it lacks modularity offered by other encrypted mempool proposals, though Spoke argues that coupling it with native account abstraction addresses those concerns.

D'Ossino identified the three main themes in Ethereum as continued core development, post-quantum resistance, and institutional developments, arguing that Ethereum has saturated the crypto-native retail side and the next wave of adoption must come from institutions. He views Arbitrum and Base as the clear current leaders among L2s and the most likely to survive the next five to ten years, citing UniChain as a cautionary example whose TVL dropped over 90 percent after incentives ran out. The Ethereum Foundation also published an EIP Champions handbook to help EIP authors navigate the decentralized governance process, with the speaker noting that many technical contributors lack the marketing skills needed to gain the visibility required for an EIP to advance.