StarkWare researchers propose a QSB proposal, allowing Bitcoin to achieve post-quantum security without changing the protocol

Gate News message, on April 10, StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy released a research proposal titled “Quantum-Secure Bitcoin Transactions Without a Soft Fork,” proposing a quantum-secure Bitcoin scheme named QSB. The core of the scheme is to replace the elliptic-curve mechanism with hash-based security assumptions, building security on hash preimage resistance in order to defend against the potential threat to Bitcoin posed by Shor’s algorithm. A notable feature of the QSB scheme is that it runs within Bitcoin’s existing script constraints, achieving quantum security without any consensus changes or a soft fork. However, QSB transactions go beyond the limits of standard relay policy, so they cannot be propagated through the default network settings and must be submitted directly to miners with services such as Slipstream. According to research estimates, the cost to generate a valid QSB transaction using cloud GPUs is about $75 to $150. At present, the scheme’s full functionality for transaction assembly and broadcasting has not been demonstrated in practice on-chain.