{"id":54460,"date":"2026-08-27T13:48:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T18:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/?p=54460"},"modified":"2026-08-27T13:48:21","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T18:48:21","slug":"bitcoin-quantum-resistant-transaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/news\/bitcoin-quantum-resistant-transaction","title":{"rendered":"No Fork Required: Bitcoin&#8217;s First Quantum-Safe Transaction Just Happened"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Should fund managers dealing in Bitcoin be worried about the threat of <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/tags\/quantum-computing\">quantum computing<\/a>?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The short answer is yes \u2014 but there&#8217;s time to prepare and solutions are already being found.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of them? Post-quantum Bitcoin transactions on the mainnet. And the first one happened this week thanks to the Starknet Foundation.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-x wp-block-embed-x\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">JUST IN: The first post-quantum resistant Bitcoin transaction was mined today.<br><br>&quot;It required no soft forks. It required no hard forks. It required no core protocol upgrades. And it&#39;s live today.&quot; <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/YyZbHhm8HI\">pic.twitter.com\/YyZbHhm8HI<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/BitcoinMagazine\/status\/2092846329424925077?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">August 27, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking at Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong on Thursday, Damian Chen, VP of growth at the Starknet Foundation, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fBTjfHBAVBk\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">demonstrated<\/a> how funds vulnerable to future quantum attacks can be secured without requiring a network-wide fork, thanks to the company&#8217;s latest solution.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;This is a monumental moment,&#8221; Chen said. &#8220;This is the first post-quantum-resistant Bitcoin transaction on bitcoin mainnet today. It required no soft forks; it required no hard forks; it required no core protocol upgrades, and it&#8217;s live today.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"fBTjfHBAVBk\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Bitcoin Asia 2026 | Day 1 Livestream\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fBTjfHBAVBk?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The transaction happened using a method created by StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy. It works like this: Bitcoin transactions sit briefly in a public queue before confirmation. During that window, they expose cryptographic material that a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could use to forge a signature and steal the funds before the transaction is confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But rather than accepting the first valid signature, his method generates millions of signature candidates until it finds one with a specific structural property that doesn&#8217;t expose that vulnerable material while waiting in the mempool.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This &#8220;signature grinding&#8221; is deliberately computationally expensive \u2014 a single transaction takes hours to produce \u2014 but that cost is what makes it resistant to quantum shortcuts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Touting Quantum safe Bitcoin transactions \u2014 dubbed &#8220;QSB&#8221; \u2014 to institutions, Chen said that even if attackers have a fund&#8217;s private keys, they couldn&#8217;t make a fraudulent transfer.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;QSB introduces a new hash authorization, and so an attacker with a sufficiently capable computer, even if they have your exposed public key, even if they derive your private key from your public key, even if they try to use that to authorize a spend to move your coins out of your wallet, those things are not enough for them to do so,&#8221; he said.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s worth noting that ordinary Bitcoin nodes currently don&#8217;t recognize this non-standard transaction format, so it couldn&#8217;t go into the public mempool and instead had to be handed straight to a miner willing to accept it \u2014 with mining company MARA&#8217;s Slipstream service being the one that mined the QSB transaction.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Quantum researchers have warned that a time will come when Bitcoin&#8217;s software \u2014 which underpins the biggest and strongest computer network in the world \u2014 will need to be upgraded to deal with quantum computing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While some crypto VC firms have urged action, top Bitcoin developers have argued that many of today&#8217;s quantum computers have limited capabilities, and have only demonstrated trivial computations.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, they have noted that their development could arrive unexpectedly \u2014 just like advances with artificial intelligence \u2014 and have started developing some solutions.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chen added: &#8220;The question to me has never been when will quantum arrive. We all know quantum will arrive at one stage, but the question to me has always been, how long will it take for you to be ready when quantum does arrive?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first post-quantum Bitcoin transaction was broadcast this week. At Bitcoin Asia, the Sharknet Foundation explained how it was done. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3860,"featured_media":54461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4378],"tags":[76,770,5748,2647],"class_list":["post-54460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-bitcoin","tag-bitcoin-asia","tag-quantum","tag-quantum-resistance"],"author_data":{"id":3860,"name":"Mathew Di Salvo","nicename":"mathewdisalvo","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/cropped-Mathew-Di-Salvo-scaled-1.jpeg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Damian-Chen.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54460"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54460\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54463,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54460\/revisions\/54463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}