Ava Labs explores backup cryptography as Sirer flags AI security risks

Emin Gün Sirer has a message for anyone losing sleep over AI cracking the math that secures their crypto wallet: you are probably worried about the wrong thing. The founder and CEO of Ava Labs, the company behind the Avalanche blockchain, said on October 9, 2026 that AI is far more likely to exploit buggy software than to break ECDSA, the signature scheme protecting most crypto transactions. He also revealed that Avalanche is exploring backup cryptography options, just in case. Sirer’s case: watch the code, not the math Sirer’s core argument was compact enough to fit in a single sentence. “We will see AI exploiting system-level bugs long before ECDSA goes away.” The algorithm itself is not the weak spot he is most worried about. The more pressing danger lives in the blockchain software, libraries, and wallets built on top of it. ECDSA, short for Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, is the mechanism that proves you own your coins when you sign a transaction. Avalanche, which launched in 2020, relies primarily on ECDSA for transaction authorization. Specifically, it uses a variant called secp256k1, a particular elliptic curve configuration widely used across the industry. Sire...