Starknet Challenge Cuts Falcon-512 Verification Benchmark to 25.9 Million Gas

A Falcon-512 signature-verification benchmark on Starknet has reached an average of 25.9 million gas, down 46.5% from a 48,398,466-gas baseline, with the listed check estimated at about $0.023. The result measures signature verification alone, not the fee for a full account transaction.

StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation run the challenge around Falcon-512, a lattice-based post-quantum signature scheme. On Starknet, verification runs in an account contract, and accounts run their own signature checks. That design lets individual accounts use different signature methods without a network-wide fork, while the challenge focuses on lowering the cost of one check.

The challenge’s opening benchmark was 48,398,466 gas. An Oct. 18 baseline run was followed by 22 successive records, with an earlier result reaching 27,915,721 gas before the current listing moved lower.

The current score is the mean Sierra gas use across 27 held-out signatures: 11 require eight Keccak blocks and 16 require nine. Entries must preserve Falcon-512’s parameters and SHAKE-256 hashing, accept valid signatures and reject malformed or tampered ones. They must also pass checks for prior breaks.

The listed $0.023 is an approximate dollar estimate based on Starknet’s gas price. It covers verification gas rather than the full account transaction fee. The record listing showed no visible as-of timestamp when reviewed Oct. 29, so the dollar estimate may change.

Neither the baseline nor record implementations have been audited, and OpenZeppelin has not reviewed or endorsed the challenge records. An earlier experimental Falcon-512 transfer on Starknet’s mainnet cost about $0.06 using an unaudited experimental account. That figure covered a full transfer and is not directly comparable with the verification benchmark.

Lower verification costs address one part of Starknet’s quantum-readiness work. Protocol hashing and Starknet’s Ethereum dependencies require separate migration work.