Jun 17, 2026 - 42mins
EPISODE 113
Quantum, Hacks, and Privacy: Inside Blockchain Security with Penn's Brett Falk
With Brett Falk, and , and and
If a sufficiently powerful quantum computer came online tomorrow, every token on every blockchain would be a target — Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana all share signature schemes that pre-date the post-quantum era. The math has been clear since the 1990s. What's been missing is the machine. That uncomfortable truth anchors this week's TRM Talks.
Brett Falk, research faculty at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Crypto and Society Lab, joins Ari Redbord, TRM’s Global Head of Policy, to work through what that actually means — why Shor's algorithm threatens every chain, what NIST's 2024 post-quantum standards mean in practice, and why Ethereum is better positioned than Bitcoin to respond. They also dig into the back-to-back Drift and Kelp DAO exploits and what made the DPRK playbook behind them unlike anything we've seen before, and into the cryptographic tools — zero-knowledge proofs, secure multi-party computation, credential-based KYC — that let users prove compliance without turning every business into a ransomware target. The math to thread that needle already exists.
Click here to listen to the entire TRM Talks: Quantum, Hacks, and Privacy: Inside Blockchain Security with Penn's Brett Falk. Follow TRM Talks on Spotify to be the first to know about new episodes.
About the guests
Dr. Brett Falk is a research professor in the computer and information sciences department at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the director of the Crypto and Society Lab, which focuses on privacy and security in digital environments and facilitating transparency and trust.
Brett has published extensively in the field of cryptography, coding theory and network analysis. Brett also teaches a highly popular course on Blockchain technology for Penn’s Master’s in Computing and Information Technology program.He received his Sc.B. in mathematics from Brown University, and his Ph.D. in mathematics from UCLA.
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