TechFlow News, April 10: According to The Block, StarkWare researcher Avihu Levy published a paper proposing the Quantum Safe Bitcoin (QSB) scheme, claiming it enables quantum-resistant transactions under Bitcoin’s existing script rules—without requiring a soft fork. The scheme replaces elliptic-curve cryptography with the RIPEMD-160 hash function via a “hash-to-signature” puzzle, thereby enhancing resilience against quantum attacks.
The paper notes that current QSB transaction costs range from approximately $75 to $150 per transaction—significantly higher than today’s average fees—and that user experience remains complex; thus, it recommends QSB only as a “last resort.” The scheme is still constrained by script opcodes and size limits and does not yet support all use cases, such as the Lightning Network. Compared to the BIP-360 proposal—which requires protocol-level changes—QSB needs no modifications to the Bitcoin protocol, but remains experimental.
