Ethereum Draft Would Retire BLS Deposits for Post-Quantum Keys

By
Devanshi Kashyap
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Ethereum Draft Would Retire BLS Deposits for Post-Quantum Keys

Ethereum developers are preparing for a future in which quantum computers threaten the cryptography securing the network today. A draft proposal filed on August 24 would rebuild Ethereum’s validator deposit contract to accept post-quantum keys. It does this by letting the contract accept different cryptographic schemes and public-key formats, and sets out how Ethereum could eventually stop taking new BLS-based deposits.

A draft proposal filed on August 24 would rebuild Ethereum’s validator deposit contract to accept post-quantum keys. This is not about switching over to post-quantum signatures right away. Instead, the goal is to lay the groundwork so Ethereum can migrate when quantum computing actually becomes a problem for the network.

Inside the New Ethereum Deposit Contract

Kevaundray Wedderburn, Tom Wambsgans and Thomas Coratger authored the proposal, which changes how validator deposits are represented and processed. Validators currently deposit using BLS public keys and signatures of fixed length, hard-coded into the contract. The draft replaces those with variable-length public keys, signatures and credential metadata.

There is also a new scheme identifier planned. Scheme 0 stays reserved for the current BLS deposit, so validators can stick with the present system, but there is room for additional schemes.

The draft would also retire the deposit contract’s Merkle-tree mechanism in favour of execution-layer requests under EIP-7685. Ethereum already runs deposits through EIP-6110, withdrawals through EIP-7002 and consolidations through EIP-7251 on that framework.

The migration is staged. The contract would deploy with BLS deposits enabled, and a later protocol decision could permanently disable new Scheme 0 deposits. Existing BLS validators would not be forced out. That gives Ethereum a controlled way to move over to a different signature scheme in the future.

The proposal remains an unmerged GitHub draft, filed under pull request #12235, and has not been selected for a network upgrade. It awaits editor consensus, technical review and discussion.

Why Ethereum Is Preparing Before Quantum Computing Arrives

Ethereum does not need to replace BLS signatures now. But changing cryptographic systems at the consensus layer takes years, and waiting for a working quantum attack would leave no time to design, test and deploy a safe migration.So, the new deposit contract aims to let Ethereum handle new cryptography whenever it is needed.

The irreversible BLS switch matters a lot. It would let Ethereum set a clear point when the old BLS entry closes and new validators can only use whatever scheme comes next. That way, Ethereum can move on instead of keeping the outdated deposit route open forever.

Developers are also looking at other ways to prepare Ethereum for the future. One separate proposal, ERC-8391, discusses a standard interface for tokenized stocks and real-world assets. That proposal would lay out ways to formalize things like market states, trading halts, price feeds, and redemption schedules.

That is a different challenge but it shows the same trend: as blockchains grow, they need clearer ways to show information that older designs never had to consider.

For Ethereum’s validator system, the immediate task is to become more flexible cryptographically. The new deposit contract design leaves space for that flexibility, keeps BLS as scheme 0 for now, and lays the groundwork to shut it down for new deposits when the network needs to make its next leap.

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