StarkWare Contest Cuts Quantum-Safe Bitcoin Compute Estimate by 79%

The headline number matters less than the framing: this is an offchain GPU problem, not a fee-market one, and the method still needs a direct line to a miner before it touches Bitcoin. That places the result closer to a proof-of-concept for post-quantum key work than to anything miners can adopt today. The open question is whether the experimental path can be made practical enough for a mining operation to consider, and whether the reduced compute estimate holds outside contest conditions.