TLDR:
- StarkWare’s Avihu Levy completed Bitcoin’s first confirmed quantum-safe transaction on mainnet.
- QSB adds a hash-based lock to Bitcoin without requiring any soft fork or consensus change.
- Signature grinding lets QSB work without a private key, costing $75 to $150 per transaction.
- Starknet already runs post-quantum accounts, ahead of StarkWare’s full three-phase quantum roadmap.
StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy has executed the first quantum-safe Bitcoin transaction on the network’s mainnet, confirmed on August 26, 2026.
The method, called Quantum-Safe Bitcoin or QSB, needed no soft fork or change to Bitcoin’s consensus rules. StarkWare engineer Tomer Giladi helped carry the project to a working mainnet result, with MARA Slipstream supplying the mining path.
Avihu Levy’s QSB Method Explained
Levy built QSB on his own time, after years of work inside the Bitcoin ecosystem, and published the research in April 2026.
Bitcoin’s existing signatures depend on elliptic curve cryptography, a system Shor’s algorithm could eventually break using a sufficiently powerful quantum computer. Once that happens, any exposed public key becomes a private key waiting to be recovered.
Most Bitcoin addresses hide their public key behind a hash until the owner spends from that address. The signature then reveals the key, and the transaction sits exposed in the mempool until a miner confirms it. A quantum adversary could use that window to read the key and spend the coins first.
Speaking on the project, StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson said Levy “took this on after hours, as a passion project, and has now shown that Bitcoin has no expiration date.” He framed the achievement as proof that quantum protection does not require waiting on a network upgrade.
QSB closes the exposure gap by adding a second lock built on hash functions instead of elliptic curves. Shor’s algorithm cannot break hash functions, and the only known quantum shortcut merely speeds up brute-force guessing.
Levy’s method relies on signature grinding, a technique that produces a valid Bitcoin signature without requiring a private key.
Why the Mainnet Transaction Matters
The sender spends computational effort off-chain searching for a transaction hash that also qualifies as a properly formatted signature.
That search currently costs between $75 and $150 in GPU computation. The approach draws heavily on Binohash, a technique developed by BitVM creator Robin Linus.
QSB transactions use nonstandard formats, so they cannot travel through Bitcoin’s ordinary mempool today. Senders need a direct path to a cooperating miner, which is why MARA Slipstream took part in the transaction. The method only protects addresses whose public key has not already been published before broadcast.
QSB does not change Bitcoin’s protocol, and the network itself remains untouched after the transaction. Ben-Sasson added that he still expects Bitcoin to pursue a soft fork eventually, noting “I still want Bitcoin to choose to do a soft fork and I expect we will get one.” He said the mainnet result reassures holders while that process plays out.
StarkWer’s own technology, built on ZK-STARKs, already rests on hash-based assumptions rather than elliptic curves.
Starknet’s native account abstraction lets accounts switch signature schemes without a network-wide protocol change, and post-quantum accounts are already active on Starknet mainnet.
The post Bitcoin Gets First Quantum-Resistant Transaction Via StarkWare’s QSB Method appeared first on Blockonomi.
This articles is written by : Nermeen Nabil Khear Abdelmalak
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