PQC Pilot Tests ML-DSA-65 Signatures on NEAR to Shield Digital Assets

Crypto custody and wallet security have long relied on elliptic curve signatures that cryptographically relevant quantum computers could eventually break. A new pilot announced August 24, 2026 brings banks and regulators together to test ML-DSA-65, a post-quantum NIST standard, inside an MPC protocol on NEAR's quantum-resistant testnet, giving the digital asset industry one of its first concrete, regulated reference architectures for migration.

On August 24, 2026, a PRNewswire-distributed announcement from Singapore said the Responsible Fintech Institute (RFI) and Safeheron, a digital asset security technology provider, have launched a cross-regional pilot to evaluate post-quantum cryptography for digital asset transactions. All five source articles in this cluster are syndicated copies of the same release; no independent reporting or external validation accompanies the announcement, so the claims should be treated as assertions by the conveners rather than independently established facts. That caveat does not negate the substance: the pilot describes a concrete technical stack, a multi-party computation (MPC) protocol supporting ML-DSA-65, the NIST FIPS 204 digital signature standard, applied to wallet generation and on-chain transfer activity on a quantum-resistant NEAR testnet. The framing is deliberately collective: selected banks and regulatory stakeholders across multiple jurisdictions will test the same architecture, with the stated intent to eventually open-source the quantum-resilient infrastructure.

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The quotes from RFI Chairman Chia Hock Lai and Safeheron Chief Security and Policy Officer Jag Foo reinforce this: no single bank, vendor, or regulator can solve the problem alone, and AI is accelerating the quantum threat timeline.

The urgency stems from the possibility that cryptographically relevant quantum computers could break the elliptic-curve signatures that underpin most blockchains and digital asset wallets. Even without a working machine, "harvest now, decrypt later" adversaries can capture signed transactions or encrypted materials today and crack them later. NIST's FIPS 204, which includes the ML-DSA family of lattice-based signatures, has become a critical standard in the migration away from classical public-key cryptography. The choice of ML-DSA-65 within an MPC protocol is notable: MPC already distributes key shares among parties to reduce single points of failure, and pairing it with a post-quantum signature algorithm attempts to remove the elliptic-curve vulnerability at the signature layer itself. Testing on NEAR's quantum-resistant testnet rather than Bitcoin or Ethereum may reflect NEAR's account model, developer accessibility, or existing relationships, though the release does not explain the choice.

The participation of banks and regulators is the most strategically significant element. Post-quantum migration is often framed as a technology problem, but regulated financial institutions must also address governance, auditability, and cross-border interoperability. If regulators are involved in the testing phase rather than merely issuing guidance later, the pilot could produce a compliance and security reference that is shaped by both builders and supervisors. The quotes from RFI Chairman Chia Hock Lai and Safeheron Chief Security and Policy Officer Jag Foo reinforce this: no single bank, vendor, or regulator can solve the problem alone, and AI is accelerating the quantum threat timeline. Those statements are rhetorical, but they reflect a broader industry shift toward pre-competitive collaboration on cryptographic infrastructure.