Written in collaboration with Arik Galansky
The GENIUS Act’s passage and the recent release of the Report from the Presidents Working Group on Digital Asset Markets reflects a pivotal shift in how the U.S. financial system is preparing for blockchain innovation. As financial regulators turn their focus toward stablecoins, tokenization, and onchain payments, a core question is emerging: how do we ensure that the cryptographic infrastructure underpinning these new activities is secure, resilient, and interoperable?
One such technology, Multi-Party Computation (MPC), has already become a de facto security standard across the digital asset ecosystem, protecting trillions of dollars with advanced safeguards. But its widespread institutional adoption still faces a hurdle: the lack of formal U.S. technical standards.
That’s why Fireblocks recently brought together a cross-industry coalition of leaders from world-class cryptography labs, financial institutions, infrastructure providers, and cybersecurity firms to submit a joint letter urging the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to accelerate its important and welcomed work on MPC standardization. This blog outlines the context, urgency, and implications of that effort.
Why MPC Is Core to Institutional-Grade Digital Asset Security
Over the past decade, novel cryptographic technologies like Multi-Party Computation (MPC) have been used to secure billions of dollars across the digital asset and crypto payments ecosystem. MPC has become a de facto standard for institutions needing advanced safeguards, playing a foundational role in “defense-in-depth” strategies that protect against both nation-state adversaries like the DPRK and consumer-targeted threats such as scams, fraud, and ransomware.
Unlike traditional approaches to digital asset custody, MPC enables sensitive operations such as transaction signing and key management without ever reconstructing a full private key in a single location. That decentralization mitigates single points of failure, making it a powerful architecture for securing both assets and operations.
As regulated financial institutions scale their digital asset programs, MPC offers a proven cryptographic backbone that meets institutional expectations around risk controls, resilience, and operational flexibility. Its growing adoption underscores the need for official technical standards to guide secure implementation—particularly in regulated environments.
Securing Digital Asset Innovation Through Standardization
NIST, while not a regulatory agency, plays a foundational role in the U.S. standards ecosystem, developing technical guidance that federal agencies, financial regulators, and private-sector entities often use as a benchmark to evaluate compliance, risk, and interoperability. For example, NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF 2.0) serves as the standard for industry, government agencies, and other organizations to manage cybersecurity risks
Despite its widespread deployment across the digital asset ecosystem, Multi-Party Computation remains without formal U.S. technical standards, creating uncertainty for regulated financial institutions seeking to adopt it at scale in the U.S. and other jurisdictions that follow NIST standards in their guidance and regulations. Recognizing this gap, Fireblocks convened a cross-industry coalition of cryptographers, financial institutions, cybersecurity experts, and blockchain technologists to submit a joint letter to NIST as part of our broader strategy to help build out standards and best practices in this space.
The letter calls for accelerated development of a Special Publication (SP) focused on Threshold Signature Schemes (TSS), an MPC-based cryptographic approach already underpinning many of the most secure digital asset platforms. Our aim is to catalyze the creation of prescriptive benchmarks that institutions can confidently integrate into their cybersecurity frameworks and product strategies.
Although NIST has already initiated preliminary work on threshold cryptography through its Interagency Report (IR) process, which is about to be published in the next few months, timelines for formal standardization remain long and unclear. We believe a Special Publication on TSS, which is achievable within a two-year timeframe, is critical to align supervisory expectations, reduce deployment risk, and future-proof digital asset infrastructure against emerging threats.
This call, alongside the Fireblocks comment to the NIST IR Process, is aimed to support NIST and give them support for a faster and more direct process to full standardization, addressing critical market needs.
What Comes Next: Embedding Resilience Into the Future of Finance
With legal permissibility and regulatory clarity now fueling digital asset integration into the U.S. financial system, the time is right to harden the infrastructure underpinning these innovations. Our cross-industry call to NIST represents a united step forward to embed proven, production-grade cryptographic safeguards into national standards. Furthermore, in the global race for the crypto capital of the world, not ceding NIST’s leadership role in such standardization is a must.
Policymakers and technologists must continue to collaborate to ensure digital asset security keeps pace with adoption, not only for compliance, but to protect institutions, consumers, and the future of financial innovation.
Read the Full Industry Letter to NIST
Frequently Asked Questions
Who signed the NIST letter?
The letter was co-signed by a cross-section of leaders from cryptography, cybersecurity, blockchain infrastructure, academia, and traditional finance. Signatories include experts, executives, and leaders from organizations such as Google, Coinbase, Stanford University, and others.What does the letter to NIST recommend?
The letter urges the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to prioritize a Special Publication (SP) on Threshold Signature Schemes (TSS), which is a widely adopted form of Multi-Party Computation (MPC), within a two-year timeline. This formalization would provide technical clarity and cybersecurity benchmarks for financial institutions deploying MPC-based infrastructure.Why is NIST important in the context of digital assets?
While NIST does not regulate financial institutions directly, its technical guidance is frequently adopted by federal agencies and financial regulators as a benchmark for compliance and operational best practices. For institutions working with digital assets, NIST standards often serve as a benchmark for assessing technical requirements and considerations related to compliance, risk, and interoperability. For example, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF 2.0) serves as the standard for industry, government agencies, and other organizations to manage cybersecurity risks. NIST publications on digital signatures, cryptographic primitives, and blockchain security methods shape regulatory expectations and inform institutional policy decisions.How does Fireblocks engage with the industry to promote best practices and harmonize standards for digital assets globally?
Fireblocks is a founding member of both the Blockchain Security Standards Council, a non-profit consortium dedicated to strengthening confidence in end-to-end security within blockchain ecosystems, and the Crypto ISAC, a member-driven, not-for-profit organization that works together to curb malicious actors, address vulnerabilities, share intelligence, and move security forward to protect the crypto ecosystem.What has NIST done so far on MPC and cryptographic standards?
NIST has recently published a second public draft of its Interagency Report (NIST IR 8214C) focused on multi-party threshold cryptography, which includes TSS. However, this is a precursor to more formal standards. The letter urges NIST to accelerate development of a Special Publication, which is a more prescriptive set of requirements used by regulated industries to guide implementation.How does this tie into stablecoins and financial regulation?
The GENIUS Act and other emerging regulations make stablecoins and digital assets part of the U.S. financial system’s future. As regulators develop rules for digital asset safekeeping, standardized approaches to cryptographic controls like MPC will be key to secure implementation, especially as institutions look to scale responsibly within the regulatory perimeter.Are there other ways that Fireblocks shares feedback with NIST?
Yes. In addition to coordinating the cross-industry letter calling for MPC standardization, Fireblocks also submitted formal technical comments to the NIST Interagency Report (NISTIR 8214C) process in June 2025. Our submission emphasized the urgency of developing dedicated guidance on Threshold Signature Schemes (TSS) and proposed a phased, accelerated approach to Special Publication timelines. These contributions are part of Fireblocks’ broader commitment to supporting secure innovation through industry engagement and standards development.
Want to dive deeper into MPC technology?
Fireblocks’ VP of Technology, Arik Galansky, is a recognized authority on digital asset security and multi-party computation. If you’re looking to understand the technical backbone of MPC and where it’s headed, we recommend the following reads:
MPC at Scale: Arik’s talk at Fhenix’s Encryption Day in Cannes during EthCC 2025 explains how advancements in MPC for ECDSA enable secure, scalable, internet-scale digital asset signing, bridging cryptography and architecture to power next-generation blockchain wallets.
Mutualism, MPC, and EIP-7702: Explores how Ethereum’s new account abstraction standard (EIP-7702) enhances composability and wallet security and explains what it means for MPC-powered infrastructure.
Announcing the Fireblocks MPC-BAM Protocol: Introduces Fireblocks’ next-generation MPC protocol, designed for blazing-fast performance and zero-trust architecture in production environments.
And if you’ve heard about a quantum threat to blockchains, Fireblocks breaks it down for you here:
Part 1: Quantum Risk in Crypto—What Institutions Need to Know demystifies the reality behind the headlines and what Fireblocks is doing to prepare, including monitoring and participating in emerging protocols from NIST, ENISA, and leading blockchain communities. Part 2: How Blockchains Will Evolve for the Quantum Era explores how Ethereum and Bitcoin could be exploited by quantum attackers and what’s being done about it at the protocol level.
