StarkWare Completes First Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Transaction
StarkWare has successfully completed the first experimental quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction on the mainnet. The company developed Quantum-Safe Bitcoin, or QSB, a method to protect funds from future quantum attacks without changing the network's consensus rules.
The method uses hash-based security and 'signature grinding' to find a transaction hash that Bitcoin will accept as a validly formatted signature.
StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said, 'I still want Bitcoin to choose to do a soft fork and I expect we will get one.' He added that QSB provides a way to protect individual holdings without waiting for a network upgrade.
The issue has drawn growing attention as researchers assess which Bitcoin holdings could be most exposed to future quantum attacks. Coinbase's quantum advisory council estimated that roughly 7 million Bitcoin could be vulnerable due to exposed public keys and address reuse.