Buterin Advocates for 128-Bit Cryptographic Security Standards

Source: CryptoNewsNet Original Title: Ethereum’s Buterin Advocates for Stronger Crypto Original Link: https://cryptonews.net/news/ethereum/32093530/ Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin recently advocated for stronger cryptography standards across the industry.

Buterin has calculated that Bitcoin’s cumulative proof-of-work (the sum of all computational effort expended on mining) stands at roughly 2^96 hashes based on recent difficulty data. This marks a significant computational milestone equivalent to 96 bits of security.

Buterin has credited Ethereum researcher Justin Drake for advocating 128-bit security levels (as seen in proposals like BLS12-381 curves and the Lean Ethereum roadmap). This would make it possible to future-proof against growing hash power.

Staying Ahead

Bitcoin secures itself via the proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm, which secures the network by requiring miners to perform billions of SHA-256 hashes to find valid blocks.

The cumulative PoW represents the total “energy barrier” an attacker would need to overcome to rewrite history.

Reaching 2^96 total hashes means Bitcoin’s chain is now protected by the equivalent of approximately 96 bits of brute-force security. This is an enormous amount of real-world computation.

Buterin has used this specific milestone to argue that cryptographic primitives across the industry should target at least approximately 128-bit security levels. In such a way, they would be able to stay comfortably ahead of growing computational power.

Many older crypto systems effectively provide only approximately 128 bits of security against certain attacks, which could make them potentially vulnerable.