A new research proposal claims that Bitcoin can achieve quantum safety without changing the protocol

According to Bitcoin Magazine, Avihu Levy of StarkWare published a research proposal titled "Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Transactions Without Soft Forks," proposing a quantum-safe Bitcoin scheme called QSB.

This scheme aims to enable Bitcoin transactions to resist quantum computing attacks without changing the core rules of Bitcoin. QSB replaces the elliptic curve security mechanism with hash-based assumptions, shifting security to hash preimage resistance to defend against the threat of Shor's algorithm. The scheme operates within the existing script limitations of Bitcoin and does not require consensus changes or soft forks.

However, QSB transactions exceed the standard relay strategy limitations and cannot propagate through the network under default settings; they need to be submitted directly to miners through services like Slipstream. The paper estimates that the cost of generating valid transactions using cloud GPUs is approximately $75 to $150. The complete transaction assembly and broadcasting of the project have not yet been demonstrated on-chain.