Disclaimer: the piece reflects the author’s opinions and is not investment advice.

Post-quantum cryptographic systems are currently larger and slower than today's standards, creating a technical hurdle for broad adoption.

Major blockchains such as Ethereum, Solana, and NEAR are promoting migration toward post-quantum cryptography as part of their security strategies.

Artificial intelligence is accelerating progress in quantum computing and cryptography, compressing timelines for potential cryptographic breakage while also helping optimize quantum error correction to address engineering bottlenecks.

AI is being applied to identify software vulnerabilities and optimize quantum error correction, potentially speeding up quantum research while increasing the risk of cryptographic flaws.

AI is being used defensively to audit code, verify post-quantum systems, and improve formal verification, while also being used by developers to test security, fueling an ongoing security arms race.

Security is shifting from static infrastructure to an adaptive, continuously evolving model that must advance to stay ahead of AI- and quantum-enabled threats.

The reliability of encryption in the digital age may be inherently temporary, necessitating ongoing security upgrades and adaptive architectures.

Blockchain ecosystems including Ethereum, Zcash, Solana, Ripple, and NEAR are researching or implementing post-quantum migration strategies, with NEAR integrating post-quantum cryptography into account infrastructure to ease key-rotation.

Because many networks rely on elliptic-curve cryptography, sufficiently powerful quantum computers could derive private keys from public keys, jeopardizing wallets and on-chain security.

A growing harvest-now, decrypt-later threat means today's encrypted data could be decrypted in the future as quantum computers mature.