Ethereum Foundation pivots away from Poseidon in post-quantum plan
The Ethereum Foundation is shifting its planned post-quantum design away from Poseidon and toward established hash functions like SHA or BLAKE, according to researcher Justin Drake. Poseidon had been considered for future systems such as leanVM, which would help Ethereum verify large amounts of blockchain activity more efficiently, but those systems are not yet on mainnet. Drake said improvements in SNARKs now make conventional hashes fast enough to replace Poseidon in these designs. He said leanVM could be production-ready in 2027, with broader deployment across Ethereum’s consensus, data, and execution layers targeted for 2028, though the timeline is still tentative. Eigen Labs CEO Sreeram Kannan said mature hash-based approaches may be safer and faster to deploy because they have already been extensively scrutinized, and he noted a 2.5x proving speed improvement from joint work with the foundation and Succinct.
