By Hamza Faisal
New York — Project Eleven, a company building security tools for digital assets in the post-quantum era, introduced Strongpoint on October 7, a flagship custody platform designed to help institutions secure and manage cryptocurrency holdings as blockchain networks migrate to quantum-resistant cryptography. The Zcash Foundation has joined as an initial development partner, helping shape the platform's institutional custody architecture.
The launch lands as the digital-asset industry confronts an uncomfortable long-term question: what happens to the cryptography underpinning wallets, exchanges and custodians when a sufficiently powerful quantum computer arrives? According to the announcement, more than $1 trillion in digital assets remains at risk of attack by such machines, because many networks still rely on signature schemes that quantum computers could theoretically break.
The trillion-dollar quantum threat
Most of the blockchains in use today secure transactions with public-key cryptography such as ECDSA, which is safe against conventional computers but vulnerable in theory to large-scale quantum machines running algorithms capable of deriving private keys from public ones. The threat is not immediate — no quantum computer yet exists that can break production-grade keys — but cryptographic migrations take years, and assets already on chain cannot simply be patched.
That urgency has been building since standards bodies began finalizing post-quantum signature algorithms, and custodians have been quietly preparing for a future in which every network they support may adopt a different quantum-resistant scheme on a different timeline.
Crypto-agility as the core idea
Strongpoint is built around what Project Eleven calls crypto-agility: instead of rebuilding key management, transaction approval and audit infrastructure for each new signature scheme or network migration, institutions keep one consistent control layer while the underlying cryptography changes beneath it.
"Institutional digital asset custody was built for a world where the cryptography underneath it rarely changed," said Alex Pruden, CEO of Project Eleven. "Quantum computing is upending that model. If every network adopts a different solution, institutions could be forced to rebuild their security infrastructure again and again. Strongpoint is built around crypto-agility, so the cryptography can change without the infrastructure changing with it."
The Zcash Foundation's involvement gives the platform an early proving ground in privacy-preserving custody. "Institutions holding shielded ZEC need custody infrastructure that respects Zcash's privacy model today and can adapt as cryptographic standards change," said Alex Bornstein, Executive Director of the Zcash Foundation. "Project Eleven is building Strongpoint with the crypto-agility and technical foundation needed to support those requirements over time, helping strengthen custody infrastructure for the broader ecosystem."
An industry-wide migration takes shape
Strongpoint is the latest sign that post-quantum readiness is moving from research papers to product roadmaps. Custodians, wallet providers and blockchain protocols alike are beginning to treat the migration as a planning problem rather than a distant worry, with interoperability and auditability as central concerns for regulated institutions.
Whether crypto-agility becomes the industry standard will depend on adoption: the platform's value grows only if the networks institutions actually use migrate on timelines it can accommodate. For now, Project Eleven has staked out a position — and with the Zcash Foundation aboard, it has its first partner to build against.
By Hamza Faisal
