AI-Assisted Coding Slashes Estimated Cost of Quantum-Resistant Bitcoin Transaction

StarkWare has announced that participants in an AI‑assisted coding competition managed to lower the estimated computing cost of a quantum‑resistant Bitcoin transaction from roughly $320 to $66. The reduction stems from a five‑fold speed increase in the search algorithm used to construct the transaction.

Background on the quantum‑safe transaction

The original estimate was based on a transaction mined in August that required about 3,100 GPU hours across a fleet of 100 graphics processors. The $320 figure represented the cost of the computational work performed before the transaction was broadcast to the Bitcoin network.

AI‑driven performance gains

StarkWare opened the code to a public competition. Contestants, many employing AI coding assistants, optimized the search routine. The leading submission achieved a rate of roughly 881 million candidate checks per second, compared with the baseline of about 146 million on the same hardware.

Implications for quantum‑related risk

A sufficiently powerful quantum computer could, in theory, derive a Bitcoin private key from an exposed public key and steal the associated funds. The StarkWare method adds a hash‑based protection layer that is expected to resist such attacks without requiring a protocol upgrade. It is intended as an emergency option for moving funds if a quantum threat materialises before a broader network‑wide solution is deployed.

Limitations and practical considerations

• The $66 estimate is derived from a test run; it has not yet been demonstrated in a transaction that was mined on Bitcoin.
• Transactions using this method must be sent directly to miners, bypassing the normal peer‑to‑peer propagation.
• Coins whose public keys are already exposed do not receive protection from this technique.

Cost outlook

Applying the contest’s speedup to the original $320 cost yields an estimated $83 per transaction, according to independent calculations. Later record‑setting runs on the contest platform suggest the $66 figure, though the exact performance metrics behind that number are not disclosed.