First Quantum-Resistant Transaction in Bitcoin Without Protocol Changes

StarkWare executed a quantum-resistant transaction in the Bitcoin mainnet. The successful operation did not require any changes to the protocol or community voting.

The vulnerability of classical Bitcoin signatures to Shor's algorithm remains an active security concern.

Standard elliptic curves allow extracting a private key from a public one using quantum computing. The greatest danger lies in the period a transaction spends in the mempool with its key exposed.

Developers shifted protection to hash functions, implementing a one-time signature within Bitcoin Script.

The QSB method involves iterating through millions of transaction variants to find the required hash. The solution fits entirely within old script limits: 201 opcodes and 10,000 bytes.

• Using hash functions instead of elliptic curves
• One-time signature embedded in Bitcoin Script
• Offline search of variants to form the transaction

The implementation of the method has been publicly available on GitHub since April this year.

Direct transmission to miners bypasses standard node network restrictions.

Non-standard transactions are ignored by regular nodes, so they are sent directly to miners. Block 964,199 was closed by the MARA pool via the Slipstream service.

The cost of protection amounts to several hundred dollars per operation when moving 10,000 satoshis.

Quantum protection applies only to specific coins whose public keys were not previously exposed on the network.