Russia’s largest bank by total assets plans to deploy an Ethereum (ETH)-compatible decentralized finance (DeFi) platform, according to a report from a Russian news agency.
Interfax reports that the Russian bank Sberbank aims to launch its new DeFi platform by May.
Sberbank is a majority state-owned bank that is home to one-third of all aggregate banking assets in Russia, according to a United Nations brief.
The bank reportedly hopes to begin open testing on the DeFi platform in March and fully open it up by the end of April with the possibility of conducting commercial operations.
The platform’s customers will be able to use the popular non-custodial wallet MetaMask, according to Konstantin Klimenko, Sberbank’s blockchain laboratory product director. Klimenko says he believes DeFi could displace traditional banking.
The European Union (EU) introduced a round of crypto-related sanctions on Russia in October in response to the country’s continued military aggression against Ukraine. The sanctions involved banning all wallet and custody services to Russia, and they came just weeks after the Russian Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Russia acknowledged it was necessary to soon enable cross-border crypto payments.
Ethereum is trading for $1,655 at time of writing. The second-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up over 1% in the past 24 hours.
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