Bitcoin Secures First Mainnet Transaction with Quantum-Safe Method

A breakthrough in quantum-safe transactions has been achieved on the Bitcoin network, as StarkWare's Quantum-Safe Bitcoin (QSB) method successfully completed its first mainnet transaction. On August 26, researcher Avihu Levy's QSB scheme was used to execute a transaction without modifying consensus rules or requiring a soft fork.

The QSB method replaces elliptic-curve security assumptions with hash-based protections designed to withstand attacks using Shor’s algorithm. However, the computation cost is high, with approximately $75, $150 in off-chain cloud GPU computation required before broadcast occurs.

QSB transactions also exceed Bitcoin's standard relay policy limits, requiring direct submission to a participating miner. The first mainnet transaction demonstrated that QSB can operate under Bitcoin’s existing consensus rules without the need for new opcodes or changes by Bitcoin nodes.