The estimated cost to prepare a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction has fallen below $67, down from approximately $320 spent on the first such mainnet transaction in August, according to StarkWare.
The reduction followed a Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge launched on September 16 by StarkWare, Yukon Research, and Eigen Labs. The challenge invited developers, researchers, and AI agents to improve the software used to build quantum-safe transactions.
According to StarkWare's September 23 update, the challenge produced 62 accepted improvements that cut the estimated computing cost by about 79% based on benchmark tests. The dashboard now shows the estimated cost has dropped to $66.
StarkWare noted that the first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction was mined and confirmed on August 26, requiring approximately 3,100 GPU-hours across roughly 100 GPUs at a compute cost of about $320, excluding Bitcoin network fees.
Emergency Solution to Quantum Risk
Quantum-Safe Bitcoin represents an experimental defense against potential future quantum attacks that does not require changes to Bitcoin's consensus rules. StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy published the design in April, describing it as a "last resort measure" due to costs, complexity, and limited applicability.
StarkWare characterized a transaction costing several hundred dollars as a demonstration, while one costing $67 "is closer to something a holder with a large unexposed balance might reach for in an emergency."
The cost reduction makes the quantum-resistant approach more practical for Bitcoin holders, though the latest optimizations have only been demonstrated in benchmark tests so far.
The development comes amid growing concern that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break the elliptic-curve digital signatures used by Bitcoin, potentially allowing attackers to steal coins whose public keys are exposed.
While researchers continue developing quantum-resistant protections including Quantum-Safe Bitcoin, StarkWare said it still favors a soft fork—a change to Bitcoin's consensus rules—as a better long-term answer for broad quantum protection on the network.
