A cross-regional pilot is stress-testing post-quantum cryptography for digital asset transfers. Banks, regulators from three jurisdictions, and Safeheron are participating on NEAR's testnet.
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A cross-border pilot is stress-testing whether post-quantum cryptography can secure digital asset transfers under institutional conditions. The Responsible Fintech Institute (RFI) launched the initiative on August 24, 2026, pairing banks with quantum-resistant protocols to generate wallets and execute onchain transfers on NEAR's testnet.
Regulators from Abu Dhabi, Bhutan, and Malta are observing the governance of the pilot. The Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), Bhutan's Gelephu Financial Services Office, and the Malta Financial Services Authority are all sitting in. Their role is to shape whatever compliance standards emerge, not just to approve the outcome.
The cryptographic backbone comes from Safeheron, a custody technology firm. On the banking side, Bison Bank and DK Bank are testing the protocol under institutional conditions.
The architecture uses a non-custodial 2-of-2 multi-party computation (MPC) design. Two separate parties each hold a share of the private key, and both must cooperate to sign a transaction. Neither party ever possesses the full key on its own.
The core algorithm is ML-DSA-65, standardized by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology as part of its post-quantum cryptography suite. NIST spent years evaluating candidates before finalizing FIPS 204. ML-DSA-65 sits at the medium security level of that family. It is designed to resist Shor's algorithm, the quantum procedure that would break the elliptic-curve cryptography securing most blockchain wallets today.
Running on NEAR's quantum-resistant testnet lets the pilot simulate real onchain conditions without risking actual assets.
The threat model driving the work is called "harvest now, decrypt later." Adversaries can intercept and store encrypted data today, then decrypt it once quantum machines are powerful enough. For financial transactions, today's onchain records could become tomorrow's vulnerabilities.
The pilot aligns with broader institutional momentum. The Bank for International Settlements has issued guidance on quantum-readiness for the financial sector. In Asia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Association of Banks in Singapore launched an AI-driven cyber taskforce that explicitly includes quantum threats. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has its own quantum preparedness initiative underway.
RFI plans to produce a whitepaper documenting the pilot's findings. The underlying post-quantum protocols will eventually be open-sourced, allowing independent auditing and broader industry adoption.
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