StarkWare Proposes Quantum-Resistant Bitcoin Without Protocol Changes

Crypto infrastructure firm StarkWare has unveiled what it described as the first practical technology for defending Bitcoin against quantum-computing attacks without modifying the network. Even so, the approach is viewed as commercially unviable because each transaction would cost $75 to $200.

CoinDesk reported on June 9 that StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy published a proposal called Quantum Safe Bitcoin, or QSB, for enabling quantum-resistant transactions without changing the Bitcoin protocol. The core idea is to replace Bitcoin’s current Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm, or ECDSA, with hash-based proofs that would be difficult to forge even with a quantum computer.

QSB’s biggest advantage is immediacy. Because it operates within Bitcoin’s existing consensus rules, it does not require a soft fork, miner approval or an activation timeline.

The proposal faces practical limits, however. Because QSB shifts security from signatures to computation, every transaction requires heavy off-chain GPU processing. The cost of generating a valid transaction using cloud GPUs is estimated at $75 to $200 per transaction. That is more than 600 times Bitcoin’s current average transfer fee of about 33 cents.

Users would also have to send transactions directly to miners, and the system would not work on Layer 2 solutions such as the Lightning Network. Levy described it as a last resort for protecting assets until a protocol upgrade is in place.