StarkWare's Optimization Challenge Cuts Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Costs by Nearly 80%

A recent optimization challenge organized by StarkWare and Yukon Research has led to an almost 80% reduction in the cost of quantum-safe Bitcoin transactions. The initial transaction, which took place just a month ago, required approximately $320 in GPU compute, but a new transaction completed within a week later required only around $67.

This significant decrease is attributed to the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge, where participants were able to build upon previously verified solutions rather than restarting from scratch. This iterative approach led to rapid gains in computational efficiency, resulting in a speedup of over 820 million verified candidates per second on an RTX 4090.

The challenge's dashboard demonstrates the tangible link between optimization and affordability, with subset selection now completing in a fraction of the time required previously. The most successful optimization approaches have come from models Opus 5 and Fable 5.1, among others.