A new Bitcoin proposal says users could protect transactions against future quantum attacks without changing the network’s core protocol.
The design, called Quantum-Safe Bitcoin, would work within Bitcoin’s existing scripting rules rather than through a soft fork.

Bitcoin’s looming quantum problem may have a workaround that does not require the usual political headache of a protocol upgrade.

That is the claim behind a proposal from StarkWare researcher Avihu Mordechai Levy, who argues that Bitcoin transactions could be made resistant to future quantum attacks using a new transaction design that fits inside the network’s current rules. In other words, no soft fork, no hard fork, no rewriting of Bitcoin’s base layer just to get started.

A quantum defense that stays inside Bitcoin’s current framework

Levy’s paper outlines what he calls Quantum-Safe Bitcoin, or QSB, a transaction scheme intended to remain secure even if quantum computers eventually break the elliptic-curve cryptography that protects Bitcoin today.

That is a serious target. Much of the anxiety around quantum computing and Bitcoin comes from the fear that Shor’s algorithm, if practical at scale one day, could undermine the cryptographic assumptions behind existing wallets and signatures. Most discussions about that scenario tend to end in the same place: Bitcoin would need to upgrade.

Levy is arguing something narrower, but still important. He says users may be able to protect themselves without waiting for network-wide consensus, because the proposed scheme works within Bitcoin’s existing scripting environment.

The bigger appeal is avoiding a fork battle

That matters because technical feasibility is only one part of any Bitcoin change. Social coordination is usually the harder one. Even modest upgrades can become slow, political and difficult to implement across the ecosystem.

A transaction design that avoids that process altogether has an obvious appeal. It would let security-conscious users move earlier, without forcing the entire network into an immediate governance fight over quantum readiness.

The proposal does not mean Bitcoin’s quantum risk is suddenly solved. Practical quantum threats still appear to be a future problem rather than a present one, and any new scheme would still need real-world testing, wallet support and careful implementation.

Still, the paper shifts the conversation a little. Instead of asking only how Bitcoin might fork to survive a quantum era, it asks whether some of that defense can begin under the rules the network already has.

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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ April 13, 2026 9:28 am