Bitcoin May Avoid Immediate Quantum Upgrade With New Workaround: Study

A Bitcoin transaction that costs $75 to $150 in GPU compute is not built for daily use, but it may still matter. StarkWare chief product officer Avihu Levy has proposed “Quantum Safe Bitcoin” (QSB), a scheme intended to make new BTC transfers resistant to quantum attacks without changing the Bitcoin protocol.

A workaround inside Bitcoin’s existing rules

Levy’s plan is designed to operate even against a large quantum computer running Shor’s algorithm. Rather than relying on elliptic curve cryptography, QSB replaces the usual approach with a hash-to-signature puzzle.

In practical terms, the sender must find an input whose hash output happens to resemble a valid ECDSA signature. The method depends on brute-force computation rather than the mathematical breakthroughs quantum computers are expected to exploit.

Development: no soft fork, but a narrow shield

The proposal is built to stay within Bitcoin’s legacy script limits and does not require a soft fork. The researchers describe it as a temporary answer that bolts a limited “shield” onto existing rules, while the broader question of long-term quantum defense remains unresolved.

Data and constraints: cost and limited applicability

StarkWare CEO Eli Ben-Sasson called the work “huge” and said it essentially makes Bitcoin quantum-safe today. However, others argue the claim is overstated because the paper does not address exposed public keys or dormant wallets.

Bitcoin ESG specialist Daniel Batten pointed to an estimated 1.7 million BTC held in early P2PK addresses that could be vulnerable if a sufficiently powerful quantum computer can crack them.

QSB also comes with a sharp limitation on who might use it. The proposal is more complex than a standard BTC transaction and, based on the reported compute cost, is described as a poor fit for routine payments.

Impact and debate within the Bitcoin community

The quantum risk discussion has already split the Bitcoin community. Some argue for leaving Bitcoin unchanged to preserve its original design. Others advocate freezing or burning vulnerable coins, while a separate group wants protocol upgrades to support quantum-safe signatures.

Levy’s proposal is positioned as a last-resort option that avoids network-wide consensus. At the same time, the researchers acknowledge that QSB is non-standard, does not scale to all users, and does not cover use cases such as the Lightning Network.

Timing: renewed pressure from new research

The timing of the proposal is part of a wider wave of activity. Google published research in March that added fresh pressure to the debate, and Lightning Labs chief technology officer Olaoluwa Osuntokun followed with a quantum fallback prototype on Wednesday.