The cost of generating a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction dropped by nearly 80% in one week. According to StarkWare, the compute cost for such a transaction fell from approximately $320 to $67. This result was achieved through the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge, organized by StarkWare, Yukon Research, and Eigen Labs.
The process involves a brute-force search performed on user hardware before the transaction reaches the blockchain. By optimizing the code, developers increased the benchmark speed from 146 million to over 820 million verified candidates per second on an RTX 4090 GPU. Participants submitted 62 improvements across two competition tracks.
AI models played a significant role in the optimization process. StarkWare reported that developers using Anthropic's Opus 5 and Fable 5.1, as well as OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra, Grok 4.6, and Kimi, achieved the leading results. The company noted that the $67 figure is an estimate based on specific hardware assumptions rather than a fixed market price.
StarkWare clarified that this method does not provide full quantum security for Bitcoin. The transactions are nonstandard and require direct submission to a miner. Furthermore, the construction only protects coins with unexposed public keys. The company maintains that a soft fork remains the preferred long-term solution for quantum resistance.
