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A researcher named Avihu Levy, CPO at StarkWare, published a proposal claiming to make bitcoin transactions quantum-safe without requiring any changes to the bitcoin protocol. The scheme, called Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB), reportedly works within bitcoin's existing consensus rules, specifically legacy script constraints of 201 opcodes and 10,000 bytes. The problem it aims to address: standard bitcoin transactions rely on ECDSA signatures, which are theoretically vulnerable to Shor's algorithm on a sufficiently powerful quantum computer. Most proposed defenses require protocol upgrades. QSB attempts a different approach. Instead of relying on elliptic curve math for security, it uses a "hash-to-signature puzzle" where the script hashes a transaction-bound public key and checks whether the output forms a valid signature structure, an event that occurs roughly once in every 2^46 attempts. The claim is that because security depends on hash pre-image resistance rather than ECDSA, Shor's algorithm wouldn't help an attacker. Levy estimates the cost to construct such a transaction at $75–$150 in cloud GPU compute and says a working pinning search has been completed on real hardware. The project is still incomplete. Script generation and GPU search code exist, but no transaction has been broadcast on-chain. The digest search hasn't been tested end-to-end, and the approach requires non-standard transaction submission directly to miners since it exceeds default relay policy limits. The proposal builds on earlier work by Robin Linus. Whether it holds up under peer review and gains any traction among bitcoin developers is an open question.

The latest quantum papers from Google and Caltech are an important signal for the industry. Timelines are still debated, but the time to act is now. The good news: post-quantum cryptography exists. This is a solvable problem, and many chains already have roadmaps. Bitcoin needs to catch up though. The bad news: post-quantum cryptography is relatively new and it would be fairly easy to create new security risks if implementation is rushed. The industry needs to align on what happens to wallets that fail to migrate before a CRQC appears. At Coinbase, we’ve been working on this for a while, auditing and upgrading our internal infrastructure, researching post-quantum cryptography and establishing a Quantum Advisory Council. It’s clear Bitcoin needs to make some fast progress here, so Coinbase is taking the role of rallying the troops and getting the right people in the room - Bitcoin core devs and the broader community - so they can start tackling this. But no one developer or company can do this alone. Real progress will require coordinated action across the ecosystem. If you’re working on post-quantum approaches for Bitcoin, we want to support you, and connect you with others that are working on it too. Please DM me directly and I’ll get you added to the working group. Bitcoin can and will upgrade, but it will take the entire community working together.