A week of AI coding cut a quantum-safe bitcoin transaction estimate from $320 to $66
StarkWare, which conducted the research, says contest participants using AI tools made the computation about five times faster, though the $66 figure has not yet been demonstrated in another transaction mined on Bitcoin.
A week of AI-assisted coding has brought the estimated GPU cost of preparing a quantum-resistant bitcoin transaction down to $66 from about $320, according to StarkWare, the company behind the research.
The earlier figure came from a transaction mined on Bitcoin in August. Preparing it took roughly 3,100 hours of computing time across a fleet of about 100 graphics processors. That $320 was the cost of the computing work done before the transaction reached Bitcoin, separate from the fee paid to put it on the blockchain.
StarkWare then opened the code to a competition. Participants, many working with AI coding tools, tried to make it search through possible solutions faster. The leaderboard shows a leading submission checking about 881 million candidates a second, against roughly 146 million for the starting code on the same benchmark graphics processor.
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