Quantum-Resistant Bitcoin Transactions Now Just $67 Each

StarkWare has announced that the estimated computational cost to prepare a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction has dropped by 79% in just over a week, from around $320 to under $67. This significant reduction is thanks to the efforts of participants in the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge, who were able to optimize the GPU computation needed for building a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction.

The challenge was launched on September 16 by StarkWare, Yukon Research, and Eigen Labs, with the aim of making the experimental defense against future quantum attacks more practical for Bitcoin holders. The results of the challenge have been demonstrated in benchmark tests, but it's still unclear whether this solution can be scaled up to meet the needs of a large number of users.

Quantum-Safe Bitcoin (QSB) is an emergency solution that doesn't require changes to the network's consensus rules. It was designed by StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy as a last resort measure due to its high costs, complexity, and limited applicability. The first QSB transaction was mined and confirmed on August 26, but it required approximately 3,100 GPU-hours across roughly 100 GPUs, at a compute cost of about $320.

StarkWare still favors a soft fork - a change to Bitcoin's consensus rules - as a better long-term answer for broad quantum protection on Bitcoin. However, the latest optimizations have made QSB more viable as an emergency solution, especially for holders with large unexposed balances who might need it in case of a quantum attack.