A group of banks, financial regulators and crypto-custody specialists has begun testing wallet
technology designed to withstand attacks from future quantum computers, an early sign that the
industry is starting to take the so-called “harvest now, decrypt later” threat seriously.
According to reporting by Cointelegraph, the cross-regional pilot is coordinated by the Responsible
Fintech Institute (RFI) together with custody-infrastructure provider Safeheron. The effort brings
together commercial lenders and supervisors to trial quantum-resistant infrastructure for digital
asset wallets and onchain transfers in a shared application environment.
Two banks, Bison Bank and DK Bank, are taking part in the hands-on testing, which covers wallet
generation and the movement of assets onchain. On the oversight side, the Abu Dhabi Global Market,
Bhutan’s Gelephu Financial Services Office and Malta’s Financial Services Authority are observing the
first phase and are expected to help shape a later governance workstream.
What is actually being tested
At the technical core of the pilot is a multiparty computation protocol that supports ML-DSA-65, a
post-quantum digital signature standard published by the US National Institute of Standards and
Technology. The participants are running the setup against a quantum-resistant version of the NEAR
testnet, allowing them to rehearse real transaction flows without exposing live funds.
Multiparty computation splits the cryptographic keys that control a wallet across several parties, so
that no single machine ever holds the full secret. Pairing that approach with a signature scheme
designed to resist quantum attacks is meant to protect custody systems against a hypothetical future
in which a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could break the elliptic-curve cryptography that
secures most of today’s blockchains.
Why institutions are moving now
The concern driving projects like this is that adversaries could record encrypted data today and
decrypt it years later once quantum hardware matures. Cointelegraph notes that the Hong Kong Monetary
Authority has set a goal of quantum-readiness for its banking sector by 2030, and that a 2025 paper
from the Bank for International Settlements urged institutions to begin phased migrations toward
post-quantum systems rather than waiting for a single cut-over.
The organizers say they plan to publish a white paper covering the research, protocol design and
findings from the trial, and intend to eventually open-source the underlying technology so that other
custodians and banks can adopt it. For now, the pilot is a controlled experiment rather than a
production rollout, but its mix of private lenders and public regulators signals that quantum
readiness is shifting from a theoretical worry into a practical engineering agenda.
Written for Red Robot with AI assistance and human editing. Based on reporting by Cointelegraph.
