‘This is huge’ – Bitcoin completes first quantum-resistant transaction

The Bitcoin network’s quantum defense has seen a major step forward this week. On the 27th of August, the StarkWare and MARA Foundation teams announced that they conducted the “first known quantum-resistant” Bitcoin transaction. 

Reacting to the milestone, Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of StarkWare, hailed the update as “huge” for the path forward for the post-quantum era for Bitcoin and other chains. 

This is huge! First, because the fact that we can have a quantum-safe tx on Bitcoin is a real accomplishment. Second, it shows that we can actually find and implement solutions to make Bitcoin and other chains, quantum-ready. We just need to decide that this is the path forward.

Currently, Bitcoin at rest, especially behind most modern wallet addresses such as Pay-to-Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) and Native SegWit (P2WPKH), is quantum resistant. They only show a hash, which hides the public key on public blockchains. 

While this makes it challenging to crack by quantum computers, the moment one spends using these addresses, the actual key is revealed to the blockchain.

This makes reusing these addresses susceptible to theft if quantum computers arrive. To close this gap, StarkWare came up with a solution. 

Bitcoin’s quantum-safe transfers without a softfork