Ethereum Foundation Ditches Poseidon Hash Function for Established Alternatives
The Ethereum Foundation has made a change to its quantum-resistant architecture plan, removing the Poseidon hash function from consideration. In its place, the organization will use established alternatives such as SHA and BLAKE. According to Justin Drake, an Ethereum researcher, advances in SNARKs technology have made existing hash functions sufficient for processing efficiency.
The shift away from Poseidon is significant because it was being considered for leanVM, a system designed to efficiently verify large-scale blockchain activity. A production-ready version of leanVM is now targeted for completion by 2027, with phased deployment across Ethereum's consensus, data, and execution layers in 2028.
Sreeram Kannan, founder and CEO of EigenLayer, believes that hash-based systems have fewer known attack paths than other quantum-resistant approaches. He also notes that joint research with the Ethereum Foundation and Succinct has increased proof speeds by 2.5 times.