StarkWare Deploys First Quantum-Resistant Bitcoin Transaction on Mainnet
StarkWare's researcher Avihu Levy has successfully executed what the company calls the first quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction on the mainnet. The test, which used StarkWare's Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) approach, was confirmed in block 964,199 and spent a 10,000-satoshi output protected using QSB.
The transaction relied on MARA Pool's Slipstream service for block propagation, as it is treated as nonstandard under Bitcoin Core's default relay policies. This means that ordinary nodes would not propagate the transaction before confirmation.
The test demonstrates that a quantum-resistant spending construction can be executed under Bitcoin's current consensus rules. StarkWare estimates that generating a QSB transaction requires 'low hundreds of dollars' in GPU computation, which is critical context for market participants.
StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson views QSB as a safety net while protocol-level protections are developed. The company points to Levy's published paper and code repository as the technical basis for the method.