What Coinbase is Doing to Prepare for Post-Quantum Cryptography

There's a lot of noise about quantum computing right now. Some of it is hype. Some of it is fear. And some of it is real.

At Coinbase, we think it's important to cut through the noise and be direct with our customers, the industry, and the broader public about what we actually know, what we're doing about it, and what we believe the entire ecosystem needs to do together.

The bottom line: A large-scale quantum computer capable of breaking current cryptography will eventually be built. No one knows exactly when. But the work to prepare needs to start now, not when it's urgent.

Earlier this year, we founded the Coinbase Independent Advisory Board on Quantum Computing and Blockchain and asked them a simple question: what is real, what is noise, and what should the industry do about it? Their answer was clear: there is high confidence that a fault-tolerant quantum computer will eventually be built, and the cryptography that secures virtually every major blockchain is vulnerable when it arrives. The threat is not imminent, but the timeline is genuinely uncertain. Post-quantum cryptographic solutions exist and are being standardized, but the harder challenges are operational: migrating millions of users, coordinating decentralized protocol upgrades, and doing all of this without weakening the security posture we have today. The Advisory Board's central message: the debate about timelines is largely irrelevant, because the preparation needs to happen now regardless. You can read the full position paper here.

That research is driving concrete action at Coinbase across three workstreams.

1. Upgrading Our Key Management System to Support Post-Quantum Cryptography

Coinbase's CoreKMS, our proprietary key management system, protects approximately 99.9% of the assets we custody. Today, it is built on state-of-the-art Multi-Party Computation (MPC) protocols designed so that no single party ever reconstructs a customer's private key.

We have begun building a post-quantum version of this system, PQ-CoreKMS. Within the next year, we will deliver an automated signing pipeline combining secure enclaves, secret-sharing, and threshold cryptography, capable of supporting any post-quantum signature algorithm with keys shared across different environments and strong, hardware-enforced security guarantees during signing. This will allow us to offer quantum-safe custody as soon as blockchains begin adopting post-quantum schemes.

Over the following two to three years, a dedicated research effort will develop full MPC capabilities for lattice-based and potentially other post-quantum signing schemes, further strengthening the system to ensure that keys are never combined.

Beyond CoreKMS, we've launched a comprehensive internal effort to prepare all of Coinbase's infrastructure for a post-quantum world. This covers how we protect customer data, how we authenticate, and every system across Coinbase that relies on cryptography. We're completing a full inventory of all cryptography used across the company, ranked by migration priority based on how critical the system is, how exposed it is, and how complex the migration will be. We're also defining the specific milestones in quantum computing progress that would trigger us to begin actual migrations.

This work extends to Base as well. Ethereum has laid out a  post-quantum roadmap, and Base inherits much of that protection through its relationship with L1. We're working to understand what affects Base beyond that, and we'll develop a concrete plan as the picture sharpens.

The principle is simple: we're building the playbooks now so we can move fast when the time comes.

2. Co-Hosting Working Sessions with Bitcoin Developers

Preparing Bitcoin for a post-quantum world is one of the most consequential and complex challenges the protocol has ever faced. It requires honest assessment of realistic timelines, open debate about migration strategies, and careful coordination across a decentralized developer community. That kind of work happens best when people are in the same room.

This August, Coinbase will co-host our first working session in partnership with Stanford, bringing together Bitcoin core developers, cryptographers, and researchers for a focused day of discussion on post-quantum migration. The goal is straightforward: take an honest look at where things stand, what solutions are viable, and what the community needs to move forward.

This is the first session, not the last. We plan to continue convening these discussions on a regular basis, bringing together the people closest to this work to make sure the conversation stays grounded, productive, and moving forward.

3. Contributing Coinbase Engineering Talent and making a donation to the Bitcoin Security Consortium

Building our own systems is necessary, but not sufficient. Bitcoin's post-quantum transition will ultimately depend on open-source protocol work, and that work needs sustained, dedicated engineering resources.

Coinbase is a founding member of the Bitcoin Security Consortium, a new initiative backed by leading financial institutions and Bitcoin companies including BlackRock, Fidelity Digital Assets, Block, Blockstream, Strategy, and others, dedicated to supporting the long-term security of the Bitcoin network. As part of this effort, we are donating to the fund supporting bitcoin developers working on quantum, as well as dedicating Coinbase engineering talent and resources directly to open-source contributions supporting proposals like BIP-360 and the broader post-quantum migration path for Bitcoin.

We believe this is the most impactful way for Coinbase to contribute to Bitcoin's quantum readiness. Rather than standing on the sidelines, we are putting our engineers alongside the core developers and researchers who are doing this work, helping to move the ball forward on the proposals and implementations that will ultimately protect the network.

The Bitcoin Security Consortium will also serve as a reliable source of information for investors, the public, and the media on the state of Bitcoin's security and post-quantum preparedness. You can learn more about the Consortium and its members here.

No one company can solve this alone. The only way through is together: researchers, developers, protocols, and companies all moving in the same direction.

The quantum future is coming, and the time to start preparing is now. 

Let's make sure crypto is ready.