Russia's central securities depository and Waves building blockchain platform

The National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia's central securities depository, and Waves Platform, have started to develop a blockchain platform to support digital assets. The new platform architecture will securely host and store tokenised and crypto assets, settling transactions and providing identification for owners of cryptocurrency wallets.

Development of the platform is already under way and the first prototype will be presented during first half of 2018. Project implementation depends not only on technical development but on the development of a legislative framework that mitigates the risks of crypto asset ownership and ensures that the service is user-friendly.

Eddie Astanin, Chairman of the Executive Board, NSD, commented: "The crypto-asset market is rapidly growing and rightfully attracting enormous attention from traditional institutional investors, post-trade infrastructure and financial regulators around the world.

"In partnering with Waves, our goal is to create a secure and user-friendly accounting infrastructure for digital assets. We consider the platform would not only provide technological and legal protection of all parties involved, but also extend variety of post-trade services for investors, custodians and new institutions emerging in this sector of economy. It is also important to synchronise our efforts with the work of regulators in this field".

Sasha Ivanov, a founder and CEO of Waves Platform, pointed out: "The ability to work with new types of financial instruments will be of interest to a wide circle of market participants, including banks, pension funds and retail investors.

"Collaboration with NSD is important for us with regard to all new and existing instruments, allowing us to ensure a high level of reliability, technological efficiency, and risk protection. NSD's expertise and deep knowledge of market infrastructure will allow us to create a unique product for crypto asset record-keeping, meeting the requirements of a broad spectrum of market players."