Banks and financial regulators from several jurisdictions will take part in a pilot project to test infrastructure designed to protect digital asset transactions from potential threats posed by quantum computing.
The Responsible Fintech Institute (RFI), an independent nonprofit organization, and digital asset custody and management infrastructure provider Safeheron announced the launch of a cross-regional pilot project to test quantum-resistant infrastructure.
The pilot project includes:
- Portuguese commercial bank Bison Bank;
- Bhutanese digital bank DK Bank;
- Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM);
- Gelephu Financial Services Office (GFSO), the independent financial regulator of Bhutan’s Gelephu Special Administrative Region;
- Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA).
The organizers are also in talks with other financial institutions about joining the project.
The infrastructure will be built on a multi-party computation (MPC) protocol developed by Safeheron that supports the post-quantum ML-DSA-65 digital signature algorithm. The algorithm is part of FIPS 204, a standard issued by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Practical testing will include wallet generation and on-chain transfers on NEAR’s quantum-resistant testnet. RFI will oversee project management, interaction between banks and regulators, and coordination among participants across jurisdictions.
Participants will test a shared application environment that enables the use of post-quantum MPC signatures under consistent conditions. In addition to the technical implementation, banks and regulators will assess the infrastructure’s operational resilience, cross-border interoperability, and governance requirements associated with its deployment.
The pilot project was designed around existing institutional models for working with digital assets. The preliminary architecture uses a non-custodial 2-of-2 MPC setup intended to allow financial institutions to retain control over access keys while minimizing additional operational overhead.
During the first phase of the pilot project, regulatory representatives will participate as observers. They will later join a separate workstream focused on infrastructure governance. This approach will allow participants to assess both the technical readiness of post-quantum solutions and the requirements that may arise when regulated financial institutions deploy them across different jurisdictions.
Once the pilot project is complete, the organizers plan to publish a document detailing the research, protocol architecture, and test results. Safeheron also plans to release the source code for the post-quantum security technology used in the project. This will allow independent audits of the implementation and enable the pilot’s findings to inform the development of industry approaches to quantum-resistant financial infrastructure.
Despite the potential use of quantum technologies in financial transactions, including to improve the security of digital asset transactions and increase the energy efficiency of cryptocurrency mining, blockchain networks remain potentially vulnerable to quantum computers. Web3 industry leaders are also calling for preparations ahead of the emergence of widely accessible quantum computers.
