The Responsible Fintech Institute (RFI) and Safeheron announced a pilot program on August 24 focused on quantum-resistant crypto wallet functionality and transfers.

The initiative is designed to examine how financial institutions could protect digital asset transactions against future quantum-computing threats. Banks participating in the pilot will test multi-party computation (MPC) with support for the digital signature standard in NIST’s FIPS 204, known as ML-DSA-65. NIST — the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology — finalized FIPS 204 in August 2024 as one of the first official post-quantum signature standards; ML-DSA is a lattice-based scheme, with the 65 denoting one of its defined security parameter levels. MPC, for its part, splits key management across multiple parties so that no single participant ever holds a complete private key, an approach already used in institutional digital asset custody to remove single points of failure. The work will be carried out on a NEAR testnet that is resistant to quantum computers.

Participants will evaluate practical functions including wallet creation and onchain sending and receiving of funds. The setup is intended to reflect institutional operating conditions rather than serve only as a theoretical exercise.

The pilot also includes a proposed MPC model with two members: a non-custodial 2-of-2 structure. According to the announcement, this model is intended to give institutions control over key ownership without adding unnecessary operational complexity.

Regulators Join the Security Testing

The initiative brings together financial institutions and regulatory stakeholders from several jurisdictions.

Current participants include Bison, Bank and DK, while regulatory participants include the Gelephu Financial Services Office in Bhutan and the Malta Financial Services Authority, Malta’s financial services regulator. Their initial role will be as observers, followed by participation in a governance-focused workstream. This is intended to give supervisors a chance to consider the operational implications of post-quantum infrastructure in areas such as operational resilience, compliance and cross-border interoperability.

RFI Chair Chia Hock Lai said the project is aimed at encouraging collaboration among institutions rather than leaving the solution to a single bank, vendor or regulator.

Crypto Industry Moves Toward Quantum Readiness

Public-key cryptography underpins many systems, including financial systems, and it faces a potential challenge from quantum computers. If quantum computers become as powerful as suggested, they could compromise secure cryptographic systems. One concern often cited in the field is the “harvest now, decrypt later” scenario, in which encrypted data captured today could be decrypted once sufficiently capable quantum machines exist.

The issue does not mean legacy cryptocurrencies are immediately at risk. Instead, the focus is on preparing infrastructure in advance so that an orderly migration can take place if more advanced quantum capabilities become reality.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the Basel-based forum for central banks, has also highlighted the need for a coordinated plan, cryptographic agility and a gradual transition across the financial sector. Its Innovation Hub has already run post-quantum tests with central banks, including the Banque de France and Deutsche Bundesbank, under Project Leap, which examined protecting financial system communications. NIST draft transition guidance published in late 2024 proposed deprecating current public-key algorithms around 2030 and disallowing them by 2035, giving institutions a broad planning horizon for migration.

RFI and Safeheron said they will publish a white paper covering the research, protocol design and testing results from the pilot. Safeheron also plans to release the underlying post-quantum code as open source at a later stage so independent researchers and security experts can review how it works.

The pilot is intended to assess whether banks, regulators and infrastructure providers can implement a quantum-resistant wallet and quantum transaction framework in a real financial environment.