StarkWare CPO proposes the QSB solution, aiming to achieve quantum-resistant transactions without the need for Bitcoin soft forks.

According to Cointelegraph, StarkWare’s Chief Product Officer Avihu Levy proposed a transaction scheme called Quantum Safe Bitcoin(QSB), aiming to make Bitcoin transactions quantum-resistant without the need for a soft fork or any modifications to Bitcoin’s underlying protocol. The scheme replaces the conventional signature problem with a hash-to-sig(hash-to-sig) problem, requiring the sender to perform extensive computations to find an input such that the hash output coincidentally resembles a valid ECDSA signature. Because this process relies purely on brute-force cracking rather than elliptic-curve mathematics that is vulnerable to quantum computers, even large quantum computers running Shor’s algorithm(Shor’s algorithm) cannot find a shortcut to break it. However, the scheme is costly and its application scenarios are limited. Data shows that the QSB scheme consumes 75 to 150 USD in GPU computing power per transaction, and is currently only suitable for secure transfers of large amounts of BTC, while being unable to cover use cases such as the Lightning Network. In addition, Bitcoin ESG researcher Daniel Batten pointed out that the scheme does not address the quantum exposure risk of approximately 1.7 million BTC dormant in early P2PK addresses. The research team admitted that QSB is only a temporary last resort before a formal upgrade to the underlying protocol.