A permissioned blockchain network developed by former Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) employees will be used to conduct fiat and cryptocurrency transactions.
UK-based software firm LAB577, spearheaded by Richard Crook, former innovation lead at RBS, is launching its first product, the Digital Asset Shared Ledger (DASL). DASL is built on the Corda Network, an open-source blockchain developed by R3, a firm focused on creating distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based financial solutions.
DASL will be used to facilitate the trading of major crypto assets, including Ethereum and ERC-20 tokens, along with British pounds on the same blockchain.
LAB577 is working with BCB, a digital assets prime broker and over-the-counter desk, in order to develop a solution for managing clients’ fiat and cryptocurrency holdings. Mirrored representations of these blockchain-based assets will be traded on the Corda Network, the LAB577 team notes.
Says Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, the founder and CEO at BCB,
“One of the greatest barriers to entry for financial institutions in digital asset markets is the uncertainty stemming from settlement and security risks. We identified LAB577’s Corda-based DASL solution as the most robust and credible way forward for trading and payments that not only mitigates those risks but also provides a scalable framework for the much more sophisticated financial instruments which lie ahead.”
Investors may conduct fiat-to-crypto and crypto-to-crypto trades through the Corda platform. Instead of waiting several business days for bank transfers, users on the DLT-powered network will be able to finalize transactions instantly.
According to LAB577 CEO Richard Crook, BCB is the first digital asset prime brokerage on the Corda Network.
Says Crook,
“DASL, built on Corda, provides institutions the ability to re-imagine how value is moved and managed. Creating new markets for previously illiquid assets and reducing risk and cost using digital assets.”
BCB’s management claims it has several clients, including big banks, that are interested in using the Corda-based DASL platform, and Landsberg-Sadie says his company has launched a number of beta clients which settle closed environment trades involving Ether and British pounds. The platform effectively operates as an institutional bridge and as settlement layers for cash and crypto.
It resolves the scalability problem by settling transactions quickly without being affected by the potentially slow processing times of a particular public blockchain. For example, users will not need to move physical crypto assets out cold storage. Instead, they can be represented as ledger entries on Corda.
The product is currently using the live Corda network and Corda nodes but has not yet been fully released.
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