Summary
- StarkWare reported that the estimated expense of executing a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction decreased from approximately $320 to around $67 within a week, as participants in its Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge enhanced the brute-force search process that operates on a user's GPU.
- Leading submissions were achieved by developers utilizing AI models, notably Anthropic's Opus 5 and Fable 5.1, with OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, Grok 4.6, and Kimi trailing closely.
- StarkWare noted that the $67 figure is merely an estimate and not a market price; moreover, this development does not render Bitcoin quantum-safe independently, as a long-term solution would still necessitate a soft fork.
The cost associated with constructing a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction has dramatically decreased by nearly 80% in just one week, thanks to the efforts of developers and AI models optimizing the underlying code.
According to StarkWare, which organized the competition in collaboration with Yukon Research and Eigen Labs, the estimated cost for such a transaction has fallen from about $320 to approximately $67, calculated based on GPU computing.
Myriad: Predict Bitcoin's future price. Make your prediction here.This estimate derives from the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge dashboard, an open competition aimed at pushing the cost down as far as possible.
The first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction was successfully mined on the mainnet last month, developed by StarkWare to secure coins without the need for a network-wide fork. The initial transaction required about 3,100 GPU-hours and cost around $320 to create. Within a week of open competition, this cost was significantly reduced.
The reduction in expenses is attributed to enhanced speed. The most costly part of the process involves a brute-force search performed on a user's hardware prior to any interaction with the blockchain, which is why it reflects as a GPU cost rather than a Bitcoin fee. The method integrates a hash where Bitcoin expects a signature, and since only about one in 70 trillion hash outputs meets the required criteria, finding a valid one necessitates repeated hashing of inputs until a match is found. More efficient code leads to fewer GPU-hours needed to achieve the same outcome.
Solvers made substantial advancements, with one key benchmark increasing from 146 million verified candidates per second to over 820 million on a standard RTX 4090, resulting in 62 enhancements across two tracks.
Notably, the top records were set by developers utilizing AI models, with StarkWare highlighting Anthropic's Opus 5 and Fable 5.1 at the forefront, followed closely by OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, Grok 4.6, and Kimi.
StarkWare was careful to set realistic expectations. The $67 figure is an estimate based on specific hardware conditions, not a fixed market price, and it fluctuates whenever a new record is established by a solver.
The company emphasized that this effort does not make Bitcoin quantum-safe by itself: these transactions are nonstandard and must be sent directly to a miner, and they only protect coins whose public keys have not been previously exposed. StarkWare insists that a soft fork is a more viable long-term solution.
This development comes amid increasing concern regarding Bitcoin's vulnerability to "Q-Day," a theoretical moment when quantum computers could potentially compromise the elliptic-curve cryptography that secures wallets. Companies like Coinbase are already preparing post-quantum custody strategies.