Technology and Science13 August, 20262 min read
Ethereum Foundation Abandons Poseidon Hash, Targets Post-Quantum Architecture With SHA Or BLAKE
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Ethereum Foundation abandoning Poseidon in post-quantum L1 architecture; switching to SHA-2s or BLAKE2s. Advances in binary-field SNARKs reduce cost of proving with traditional hashes.
5 outlets told this the same way.
Poseidon Out, SHA/BLAKE In
Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake said the foundation is abandoning the Poseidon hash function and turning to established alternatives such as SHA or BLAKE in its planned post-quantum architecture.
Drake linked the pivot to advances in SNARKs, saying conventional hashes can now perform efficiently enough to replace Poseidon in planned systems like leanVM, which would help Ethereum efficiently verify large volumes of blockchain activity.
The articles say those systems have not yet been deployed on mainnet, and that a production-ready leanVM is targeted for 2027 with deployments across Ethereum’s consensus, data and execution layers in 2028.
Drake also described the decision as the conclusion of an eight-year, eight-figure effort, writing “Goodbye, Poseidon!” in an Aug. 13 X post.
The Crypto News article adds that Ethereum’s layer 1 roadmap will use traditional hashes instead of the SNARK-focused Poseidon function, while projects that already use Poseidon are not required to replace it because of the roadmap decision.
Why the Trade-off Shifted
The sources attribute the change to how binary-field SNARKs make conventional hash functions cheaper to prove, aligning proof-system calculations with the zeros and ones used in conventional computing. Crypto News says binary-field SNARKs can reportedly prove about 1 million traditional hash calls per second, with an overhead of roughly 100 times compared with native CPU execution. TradingView reports that advances in SNARKs mean conventional hashes can now perform efficiently enough to replace Poseidon in planned systems, and it also says those systems have not yet been deployed on mainnet.
TradingView further quotes Eigen Labs founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan saying 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. That same TradingView article says Kannan reported joint work with the foundation and zero-knowledge proof company Succinct increased proving speeds by 2.5 times.
Post-Quantum Security and Timing
The pivot is framed as part of Ethereum’s post-quantum security program, which the sources say is preparing the protocol for computers capable of breaking elliptic-curve cryptography. Crypto News says Ethereum currently relies on elliptic-curve systems for user accounts and parts of its consensus and data infrastructure, and it links the roadmap change to hash-based signatures as a planned protection against quantum computers. The Crypto News article also says SNARK aggregation could address signature size by verifying many hash-based signatures and compressing the result into one smaller proof for the network.
TradingView adds that a production-ready leanVM is targeted for 2027, followed by deployments across Ethereum’s consensus, data and execution layers in 2028, with the dates remaining preliminary. Across the sources, the decision is described as a roadmap choice for Ethereum L1 rather than an immediate removal of Poseidon from existing applications, with the articles stating rollups, virtual machines, and other projects that already use the function are not required to replace it.