Ethereum Foundation Drops Poseidon From Post-Quantum Plan

Faster SNARK performance is supporting tentative targets for a production-ready leanVM in 2027 and broader Ethereum deployments in 2028.

Ethereum Foundation Drops Poseidon From Post-Quantum Plan

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Written by

Ezra Reguerra

staff writer

Reviewed by

Yohan Yun

staff editor

Written by

Ezra Reguerra

staff writer

Reviewed by

Yohan Yun

staff editor

Ethereum Foundation pivots away from Poseidon in post-quantum plan

Latest News

Published

Aug 13, 2026

Advances in compact proofs have erased Poseidon’s previous performance advantage, according to researcher Justin Drake.

The Ethereum Foundation is moving away from the Poseidon hash function in its planned post-quantum architecture, according to researcher Justin Drake.

On Thursday, Drake

said

the foundation was abandoning Poseidon and turning to established alternatives such as SHA or BLAKE. A hash function converts data into a fixed digital fingerprint, enabling computers to check that information has not been altered.

Poseidon had been considered for future post-quantum systems such as leanVM, which would help Ethereum efficiently verify large volumes of blockchain activity. Those systems have not yet been deployed on mainnet.

Drake said advances in SNARKs, which are compact proofs used to confirm computations without repeating underlying work, mean conventional hashes can now perform efficiently enough to replace Poseidon in those planned systems.

He said a production-ready leanVM is targeted for 2027, followed by deployments across Ethereum’s consensus, data and execution layers in 2028. The dates remain preliminary.

Eigen Labs founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan

said

established hash-based systems have fewer known avenues of attack than other post-quantum approaches and could be deployed faster because they have already undergone years of scrutiny.

Kannan said joint work with the foundation and zero-knowledge proof company Succinct had increased proving speeds by 2.5 times.

Related:

Vitalik Buterin outlines quantum resistance roadmap for Ethereum

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