AI-Assisted Developers Cut Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Cost Estimate to $66 in StarkWare Contest

One week of an open contest, in which developers leaned on AI models to speed up GPU code, pushed the estimated compute bill for a quantum-safe bitcoin spend from about $320 to $66.

AI-assisted developers cut quantum-safe bitcoin cost estimate to $66 in StarkWare contest

Original Photo by Pierre Borthiry - Peiobty on Unsplash

Posted September 24, 2026 at 6:16 am EST.

An open coding contest has cut the estimated cost of building a quantum-safe bitcoin transaction to about a fifth of what the first one cost in August. StarkWare said on Wednesday that one week of the Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Optimization Challenge brought the estimated GPU bill down to about $67 from roughly $320, a drop of about 79%. By Thursday morning, the contest’s live dashboard showed $66.

StarkWare runs the challenge with Yukon Research and Eigen Labs. The three launched it on Sept. 16 with $20,000 in prizes from StarkWare plus a separate Yukon prize. Entrants speed up the GPU code behind Quantum-Safe Bitcoin, or QSB, a method StarkWare’s Avihu Levy first published in April that adds hash-based protection to a bitcoin spend without changing the network’s rules. The first such transaction was mined in August after roughly 3,100 GPU-hours of work.