Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Transaction Successfully Mined on Mainnet

A quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction has been successfully mined on the mainnet without requiring any changes to the network's consensus rules.

The transaction used Quantum-Safe Bitcoin (QSB), a design developed by Avihu Levy, head of StarkWare's applications division, in collaboration with StarkWare engineer Tomer Giladi. QSB replaces a non-quantum-safe component with a hash-to-signature puzzle based on RIPEMD-160 pre-image resistance.

The process remains costly, with Levy estimating offchain GPU expenses at several hundred dollars per transaction. Additionally, QSB transactions are nonstandard and currently require a direct mining route.