An open optimization contest backed by StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation roughly halved the gas cost of verifying Falcon-512 signatures
Quantum-safe transactions on Starknet now cost about $0.023 per verification.
That’s the result of an open challenge where people and AI agents compete to make post-quantum signatures cheaper. Within weeks, they cut the gas bill for verifying a Falcon-512 signature roughly in half.
How a coding contest halved the bill
The challenge targets Falcon-512, a post-quantum signature scheme. The contest asks a narrow question: how cheaply can a Falcon-512 signature be verified inside Starknet’s Cairo-based environment?
The starting line came from OpenZeppelin, which supplied the initial verifier. That baseline implementation consumed 48.4 million gas per verification.
The current leading implementation sits at approximately 25.9 million gas. That is close to a 2x improvement, or nearly 50% less work for the network.
Translated into money, the record works out to about $0.023 per verification at recent STRK token prices. The figure depends on the token, so it will shift as STRK moves.
The challenge launched around October 18, 2026, as a joint effort between StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation. Dozens of successive records were set within days, and the roughly 50% reduction was reached by late October.
For Falcon-512 specifically, participants and their AI agents set 434 records on the way to the about $0.023 cost figure. Each result is checked and publicly credited to whoever produced it.
From a $0.06 demo to a cents-level benchmark
This is not Starknet’s first pass at Falcon-512. In July 2026, a mainnet transfer using a Falcon-512 account cost around $0.06.
That transaction was described as experimental and unaudited. It was a proof that the plumbing worked, not a product anyone was meant to rely on.
The two numbers measure slightly different things. The July figure covered a full account transfer, while the newer $0.023 figure refers to the verification step.
The Falcon-512 work sits inside a broader post-quantum roadmap from StarkWare. The company points to Starknet’s STARK-proof architecture as the basis for its claims of quantum resistance.
That framing matters for context. STARK proofs secure how Starknet proves its computation, but user accounts still need signatures, and that’s where schemes like Falcon-512 come in.
What this means for Starknet and post-quantum crypto
The caveats are real. The earlier mainnet demo was explicitly experimental and unaudited, and record-setting optimizations in a contest are not the same as audited, production-ready code.
Aggressive gas tricks can also introduce subtle bugs. Any verifier that ends up protecting real funds will need serious review before it graduates from the leaderboard.
