Avalanche founder Emin Gun Sirer (에민 귄 시러) warned that XRP Ledger could be vulnerable to AI-driven attacks.

According to blockchain outlet U.Today on Oct. 9, Sirer argued that the industry should focus less on a future in which cryptography is broken and more on the possibility that AI could first find hidden vulnerabilities in blockchain software.

Sirer said the cryptocurrency industry is overly focused on the possibility of a breakthrough in cryptography. He said the more realistic risk is AI finding software flaws humans missed. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he said: "We will see AI exploit system-level bugs long before ECDSA disappears." ECDSA is a technology used to verify whether a cryptocurrency owner actually approved a transaction.

He said the risk is not limited to blockchain protocols themselves. Sirer said more advanced AI models could find bugs that people have not discovered across blockchain software, libraries and cryptocurrency wallets. He warned that if such weaknesses are exploited, AI could cause damage worth billions of dollars even before it directly breaks widely used cryptographic technology.

Sirer cited XRP Ledger as an example and mentioned the possibility of zero-day vulnerabilities that remain out of sight. "If you believe there are no zero-day bugs in Ripple's code, or in the code of other chains that are valuable but lightly used, that humans struggle to see but AI can easily find, you are mistaken," he said. Sirer did not, however, present a specific unpatched vulnerability in XRP Ledger or prove a case in which AI actually attacked the network.

The comments come as XRP Ledger security issues have come back into focus. XRP Ledger developers distributed an emergency software update on Sept. 25. They initially did not release the source code for the security fixes, but have said they plan to release it later along with a technical retrospective.

Sirer's challenge also intersects with an ongoing debate in the cryptocurrency industry over AI security. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned that AI-driven mathematical discoveries could challenge lattice-based cryptographic assumptions within 2 years. Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson pushed back, calling such concerns speculative. Ethereum researcher Justin Drake also expressed concern that AI could someday attack ECDSA.

Sirer did not rule out those possibilities entirely. He said the industry should be more on guard now against software vulnerabilities that may already exist than against a future collapse of cryptography. Alongside the recent emergency update surrounding XRP Ledger, security discussions around blockchain networks are also broadening from cryptographic algorithms themselves to code and operating systems overall.