A cross-regional initiative launched on Aug. 24, 2026, is testing post-quantum security for digital asset wallets and blockchain transfers, bringing together banks and financial regulators from Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Bison Bank and DK Bank will carry out wallet creation and on-chain transfer tests in a controlled NEAR testnet environment, while authorities from Abu Dhabi Global Market, Bhutan’s Gelephu Financial Services Office and the Malta Financial Services Authority observe the first phase.
The Responsible Fintech Institute convened the pilot, with digital asset custody infrastructure provider Safeheron as technology partner. The core technical work combines multiparty computation with ML-DSA-65, one of the digital signature parameter sets in the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology’s FIPS 204 standard. NIST finalized that standard in August 2024 and considers ML-DSA resistant to attacks from large-scale quantum computers, provided it is correctly implemented and subject to continued cryptographic review.
Organizers emphasized that no cryptographically relevant quantum computer currently exists that can break deployed blockchain signatures at scale. The pilot is therefore a preparedness exercise rather than a response to an active compromise. It does not involve the public NEAR mainnet or customer funds, and the announcement did not specify the assets involved, transaction volumes, testing schedule or performance measures.
Regulators will examine governance, operational resilience and cross-border interoperability after observing the technical testing. “No single bank, vendor, or regulator solves this alone,” said Chia Hock Lai, Chairman of the Responsible Fintech Institute, framing the project as an effort to create a shared security and compliance reference. Safeheron’s Chief Security & Policy Officer Jag Foo added that quantum-ready infrastructure has never been more critical as AI accelerates technological change.
The organizers plan to publish a white paper covering the research, protocol design and test findings, and Safeheron eventually intends to release the underlying protocol as open-source software. Neither has a confirmed publication date. The initiative follows broader regulatory and industry work on quantum migration, including a July 2025 Bank for International Settlements roadmap warning that post-quantum transitions require coordinated planning, cryptographic agility and phased migration rather than a simple algorithm swap.
The pilot also lands amid wider quantum-readiness efforts. Hong Kong’s banking sector scored 2.3 out of 10 for quantum preparedness in a recent assessment, with 32% of surveyed banks not yet preparing, while the Hong Kong Monetary Authority wants full sector readiness by 2030. The Algorand Foundation has set a 2027 target for broad quantum resilience, and Bitcoin developers have proposed new transaction formats intended to protect future funds from quantum attacks. Those efforts, however, would require coordination across users, wallets, exchanges and custodians.
