Google to preview a new crypto security system as private-key hacks mount - CoinDesk

The product, officially named Google Multi-Party Compute (MPC), is in private preview and is not yet generally available. Several design partners and major financial institutions are testing the technology, Google told CoinDesk.

Alphabet, the parent company, has also begun using it to secure its own digital assets on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains. The company plans to make Google Multi-Party Compute commercially available in early 2027, but has not disclosed pricing.

Private-key theft drives demand

An attacker who gains control of the private key protecting a wallet may be able to transfer its assets without the owner's permission, making key management a critical security challenge for institutions entering the market.

The threat has already cost the crypto industry billions of dollars over the years. According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, compromised private keys accounted for 43.8% of cryptocurrency stolen in 2024.

Separately, DeFiLlama data showed that as of June of this year, blockchain projects have lost a cumulative $16.69 billion to hacks and exploits, with roughly 40% of those losses attributed to private-key compromises.

How the system works

The tech giant's new system aims to reduce the risk of relying on a single private key by using "multi-party computation," or MPC, which distributes control of a private key among multiple parties or computers.

This way, instead of relying on a single key, the system requires several distinct pieces of cryptographic information to work together to authorize a transaction. The complete private key is never stored in one place, according to Google.

A bank, for example, could keep one share of a cryptographic signing key in Google Cloud, another on its own hardware and a third with another cloud provider. When the bank wants to move assets, the transaction enters Google's Confidential Space.

There, a policy engine checks it against the institution's rules before signing can begin. Those rules could include limits on the amount being transferred, restrictions on destination wallets and requirements for approval from several departments.

Google says the system can also accommodate different cryptographic signing thresholds, such as requiring two of three or five of seven participants to jointly produce a transaction signature.

AI and quantum threats

Google is also positioning the service as a response to increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, including threats involving artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing.

Chainalysis found that cryptocurrency scams linked to AI-tool vendors extracted an average of $3.2 million per operation in 2025, compared with $719,000 for scams without such links — roughly 4.5 times as much.

Recently, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned that advances in AI could eventually uncover mathematical shortcuts that could break the digital signatures protecting Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets.

Google said its architecture is designed to support future upgrades to post-quantum cryptography, which seeks to protect digital signatures against attacks by sufficiently powerful quantum computers.

Google researchers have previously estimated that a sufficiently powerful future quantum computer could theoretically derive a bitcoin private key from an exposed public key in roughly 9 minutes, assuming advanced preparation.

A new competitor

Google's planned entry to the market brings one of the world's largest cloud providers closer to competing in a market already served by specialist crypto security firms, including Fireblocks, Fordefi and BitGo.

The company also said its system supports fast transaction signing and key recovery, although it did not provide independently verified performance comparisons with existing custody products.

Google said its MPC offering is designed to support conventional ECDSA and Ed25519 cryptographic signing algorithms at general availability. The company did not provide a timetable for adding post-quantum signing capabilities but said the upgrades could be introduced as blockchain networks adopt the necessary cryptography.