StarkWare Says AI Coding Cuts Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Computing Cost by 79%

Key Takeaways

• StarkWare said the estimated computing costs of preparing a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction fell from $320 to $66 after a week of optimization.
• The savings concern transaction preparation, separate from Bitcoin network fees.
• The method requires direct miner submission and cannot protect coins whose public keys were already exposed.

StarkWare says a week of AI-assisted coding has reduced the estimated GPU cost of preparing a quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction from about $320 to $66, a decline of roughly 79%.

The figure remains a benchmark estimate, not a measured cost from a new mainnet transaction, says StarkWare.

AI Coding Improves Benchmark Performance

The work builds on a Quantum-Safe Bitcoin (QSB) transaction mined on August 26, StarkWare says. Preparing it took roughly 3,100 GPU-hours in total across a fleet of roughly 100 graphics processors. The cost was about $320 before blockchain submission, separate from the network transaction fee.

StarkWare, Yukon Research, and Eigen Labs subsequently launched an optimization challenge, inviting developers and AI agents to improve the underlying calculations.

The leaderboard shows a leading transaction-pinning submission processed approximately 881 million candidates per second on an RTX 4090, compared with 146 million for the baseline. These candidates are possible solutions examined while constructing the transaction.

However, the cost estimate still needs clarification. CoinDesk calculated approximately $83 using the published speed improvements and original cost breakdown. The competition website references later performance gains but does not clearly show how those produce the $66 estimate.  

Quantum Protection Has Limits

A sufficiently capable quantum computer could derive private keys from exposed public keys. StarkWare says QSB is designed to protect eligible transactions against that threat.

It adds a form of protection based on hashes within Bitcoin’s existing consensus rules to withstand that attack. QSB operates within Bitcoin’s existing consensus rules and requires no protocol upgrades.

It is intended as an emergency option for moving eligible coins if powerful quantum computers threaten Bitcoin before broader protections are adopted.

However, it cannot secure coins whose public keys were already exposed. Its transactions also currently require direct submission to miners, as ordinary network relay does not support their format.

StarkWare says a soft fork remains preferable for efficient, widely usable quantum protection across Bitcoin. 

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