StarkWare cuts estimated cost of quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction after AI coding contest

Traders Union
All News
Crypto
StarkWare cuts cost of quantum-safe Bitcoin

Highlights

StarkWare's AI-assisted coding contest reduced the estimated GPU preparation cost for a quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction from $320 to as low as $66.
Top contest submissions increased computation speed from about 146 million to 881 million candidates per second, making the process five times faster.
Despite cost reductions, StarkWare's solution remains an emergency option with operational limits, not protecting coins with previously exposed public keys and requiring transactions to be sent directly to miners.

Contest results reduce projected computing costs

As reported by CoinDesk, citing StarkWare, the company opened its code to a competition after an August Bitcoin transaction produced an earlier estimated preparation cost of about $320 in GPU work before blockchain fees. That transaction required roughly 3,100 hours of computing time across about 100 graphics processors, and the latest estimate follows attempts by participants using AI coding tools to speed up the search for valid solutions.

The contest leaderboard shows the top submission checking about 881 million candidates per second, compared with roughly 146 million for the starting code on the same benchmark graphics processor. StarkWare says that improvement makes the computation about five times faster, helping bring the estimated cost down sharply.

The $66 figure, however, remains based on a test of the computation rather than a newly mined Bitcoin transaction. CoinDesk calculates that applying the speedups shown on the contest site to the listed $320 cost breakdown yields about $83, while the site says later record-setting runs go beyond those measurements without showing which results produce the $66 estimate.

Quantum risk remains theoretical, operational limits persist

The work targets a possible future security threat to Bitcoin, where a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could derive a private key from an exposed public key and steal coins. StarkWare's method adds protection based on hashes, which are expected to resist that type of attack, and it fits within Bitcoin's current rules without requiring a network upgrade.

The approach is positioned as an emergency option for moving eligible coins if a quantum threat arrives before Bitcoin adopts a broader solution. Even with lower projected costs, the method still faces practical constraints because the transactions must be sent directly to a miner rather than moving through the network in the usual way, and it does not protect coins whose public keys are already exposed, the group a quantum attacker would be able to target first.

In our earlier article on Stacks’ institutional Bitcoin staking program, we explained how the Genesis Bond structure aims to bring yield and liquidity functions closer to Bitcoin while keeping BTC time-locked under the holder’s own keys. We also outlined how the six-month design pairs bonded BTC with a required STX commitment and uses incentives like Stack Sats to deepen liquidity in related markets.

This material may contain third-party opinions, none of the data and information on this webpage constitutes investment advice according to our Disclaimer. While we adhere to strict Editorial Integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners.