Zero Hedge

Ethereum Prepares For Quantum Era With New Security Team And Funding

Ethereum Prepares For Quantum Era With New Security Team And Funding

Authored by Amin Haqshanas via CoinTelegraph.com,

The Ethereum Foundation has made post-quantum security a central focus of the network’s long-term roadmap, announcing the formation of a dedicated Post Quantum (PQ) team.

The new team will be led by Thomas Coratger, a cryptographic engineer at the Ethereum Foundation, with support from Emile, a cryptographer closely associated with leanVM, according to crypto researcher Justin Drake.

“After years of quiet R&D, EF management has officially declared PQ security a top strategic priority,” Drake said in a Saturday post on X. “It's now 2026, timelines are accelerating. Time to go full PQ.”

The researcher described leanVM, a specialized, minimalist zero-knowledge proof virtual machine (zkVM), as a potential building block of Ethereum’s post-quantum strategy.

EF backs post-quantum push with developer sessions, funding

Drake outlined several near-term steps aimed at preparing the ecosystem. A biweekly developer session focused on post-quantum transactions is set to begin next month, led by Ethereum researcher Antonio Sanso. The sessions will concentrate on user-facing protections, including protocol-level cryptographic tools, account abstraction pathways and longer-term work on aggregating transaction signatures using leanVM.

The Ethereum Foundation is also backing its push with new funding. Drake announced a $1 million Poseidon Prize to strengthen the Poseidon hash function, alongside another $1 million initiative known as the Proximity Prize, both aimed at advancing post-quantum cryptography.

Ethereum prepares for quantum era. Source: Justin Drake

On the engineering front, Drake said multi-client post-quantum consensus development networks are already live, with multiple teams participating and coordinating through weekly interoperability calls.

Furthermore, the foundation will host a dedicated post-quantum event in October, followed by a post-quantum day in late March ahead of EthCC. Educational efforts, including video content and materials aimed at enterprises, are also underway.

Coinbase forms board to assess quantum risks

The announcement comes amid growing sensitivity in crypto markets to quantum risk. On Wednesday, Coinbase revealed that it has established an independent advisory board to evaluate how advances in quantum computing could impact the cryptography securing major blockchain networks, including Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The board brings together experts from academia and industry in quantum computing, cryptography, and blockchain security, and will publish public research and guidance for developers, organizations, and users. Its first position paper is expected in early 2027.

Tyler Durden Mon, 01/26/2026 - 03:30

JD Vance Notes Something Very Important About Minneapolis Chaos

JD Vance Notes Something Very Important About Minneapolis Chaos

Authored by 'sundance' via The Last Refuge,

Last week CPB commander Greg Bovino was asked what makes Minneapolis different from other cities where ICE enforcement operations have taken place. Bovino noted in the Minneapolis region there is no separation between the extremists on the ground and the people in local government.

Today, Vice President JD Vance concurs and expands on that sentiment:

[Source]

What Vice-President Vance says here is very important. 

The regional government is a stakeholder in maintaining the chaos on the streets. 

Why? 

Because for two decades a cancer of rampant financial fraud has been permitted to spread throughout the Minneapolis region and has now reached the stage of visible metastasis.

Shortly after the George Floyd shooting, some of us started looking into a background issue where it seemed like local police and Floyd had a knowledgeable relationship with each other prior to the encounter on the street.  The initial contact between Floyd and police was about Floyd passing off a counterfeit $20 bill to a business that was not part of the approved money laundering operation.

When you follow that trail, you end up in a really weird place where it seemed like millions of counterfeit dollars were entering the country through Mexico, going by rail into the U.S. mainland and then transitioning through the Minneapolis region. I stopped researching it {SEE HERE} when I discovered that Floyd and police officer Chauvin were friends, and worked together at one of the laundry businesses; a nightclub.

The corrupt activity in the Minneapolis area has been going on for around two decades.  There are two basic components, local financial fraud and govt financial fraud. 

  • The local fraud represented millions and involved counterfeit goods/money and laundering operations. 

  • The government assisted financial fraud represents billions and involves abuses of federal tax monies.

After 20 years of this activity almost all elements of the economic and social structure are now compromised.  As we have seen in the last several weeks, the HHS/CMS fraud is extensive and that illegal activity is impossible to exist without the knowledge, aid and assistance of the regional and municipal government officials.

Fraudulent day cares, fraudulent healthcare services, fraudulent transport companies, fraudulent “Health Outreach Workers” and various governmental offices all involved in bilking taxpayers for billions upon billions.  At the same time there is a massive money laundering operation in the underground economy.

After two decades of this unchecked corruption, there’s no way to guess how much of the regional economic activity is actually dependent on the financial fraud.  My best estimate is that over fifty percent of all economic activity -in the entire region- is based on fraud.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions are the surface level issue for the regional and state government.  However, it is the widespread financial fraud that turns the activity of the leftist agitators on the street into a useful tool for the regional officials to manipulate in order to hide the true financial fraud that surrounds the area.

The “local authorities” are working with the “far left agitators” because the Minneapolis region is a network of codependent fraud.

The police are compromised. The judges and courts are compromised. The local municipal officials are compromised. The mayor’s office is compromised, and the corruption issue spreads out to the state level when Governor Tim Walz previously shut down audits of the financial crimes and then state officials ignored whistleblowers.

All of the private and public institutions -within the system of regional and state government- are connected to a statewide network of financial fraud, from counterfeit money laundering to exploitation of federal government benefits; it is all connected to the same network of fraud.

It was the ease and ability to conduct fraud that attracted the Somali migrants and the criminal aliens.  These people came for the money. ICE coming to arrest the aliens has put a spotlight on the reason why they aggregated in the Minneapolis region.

How this can be corrected is anyone’s guess.

Follow the money trail and you will discover this real reason for the state and local officials to support the anarchy in the streets.  They all want the federal government to leave.

Arrest Records Here...

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 22:10

Centrus To Invest $560 Million for High-Rate Manufacturing Plan

Centrus To Invest $560 Million for High-Rate Manufacturing Plan

Centrus Energy, which has long been one of our favorite stocks throughout 2025 and into 2026, is redirecting over 60% of the $900 million Department of Energy (DOE) funding award back into the economy to secure the US domestic nuclear fuel chain.

Centrus will invest $560 million into their Oak Ridge, Tennessee, centrifuge production facility to convert it to a high-rate manufacturing plant with the goal of quickly addressing the lack of domestic enrichment and get new centrifuge cascades online before 2029. The investment is expected to create over 400 jobs in Oak Ridge, and is likely only the first of many announcements.

Centrus centrifuges

Centrus has long differentiated itself from its competition in the uranium enrichment business by highlighting their all-American supply chain and production facility, which also enables them to produce the high-demand unobligated enriched uranium. This is often compared to the commercial-scale competition from Urenco, which has been operating for years out of New Mexico. Urenco uses European centrifuge technology developed by a consortium of the UK and Dutch governments, along with German utility companies.

The US still remains incapable of supporting even its current domestic commercial nuclear fleet, requiring imports of over 99% of raw uranium ore (U3O8) and about 75% of enrichment services.

Relying heavily on countries like Canada and Kazakhstan for U3O8, and a combination of Russia and Europe for enrichment services, this has led to the current table-pounding by Secretary Wright and President Trump to reinvigorate the nuclear fuel chain at every stage. The recent $2.7 billion enrichment award from the DOE is a major part of this effort.

As also noted by Goldman Sachs, the tightening of supply from Russia for U3O8 and conversion/enrichment services has sent prices almost straight up over the past few years since the start of the Ukraine-Russia war. 

The other two awardees of the recent enrichment contract, General Matter and Orano, have yet to provide explicit details as to where the $900 million will be spent.

Like USAR, which we learned had received a massive $1+ billion investment from the US government, Centrus (ticker LEU) is one of the most shorted names in the market, with 25% of its float shorted...

... and we expect to see a major squeeze when it opens for trading tomorrow, especially since it is one of the most popular retail-held stocks according to JPMorgan; in fact just on Friday we listed it as one of the 20 most likely stocks according to JPM to rip in a major short squeeze.

Tyler Durden Sun, 01/25/2026 - 21:35

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