(Kitco News) - Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia, has announced that it will move forward with its plan to launch a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform and plans to trial the new product within the next several months.
According to a report posted Friday by the local news agency Interfax, the platform is currently being tested in private beta and the bank expects to launch open trials by May 2023, Sber’s Blockchain Lab product director Konstantin Klimenko said.
"We set a big goal for ourselves – to make the Russian DeFi ecosystem number one. Our network is now operating in a closed beta testing format. Starting March 1, we will move into the next phase, it will no longer be beta testing, but open testing,” Klimenko said while answering questions from participants of the VII Perm Economic Congress on Friday.
The full release of the new DeFi platform is planned for the end of April, at which point users will be able to conduct their first commercial transactions, he added. Klimenko noted that the new platform will operate on the Ethereum network, which means that customers will be able to utilize popular wallets like MetaMask to access and transfer their assets.
The Sberbank product director suggested that DeFi may one day crowd out the traditional banking services market.
Sberbank first revealed its plan to integrate its platform with Ethereum in November at an event hosted by Sber Blockchain Laboratory. The integration with the top smart contract platform enables developers to freely transfer smart contracts and entire projects between the bank's blockchain network and open blockchain networks.
“The Sberbank blockchain laboratory works closely with external developers and partner companies, and I am glad that our community will be able to run DeFi applications on Sber's infrastructure,” said Alexander Nam, Director of the Sberbank Blockchain Laboratory.
“I am sure that, given the rapid development of Web3, platforms that support multiple blockchain protocols will be more and more in demand,” Nam added. “And Sber will be able to unite developers, corporations and financial institutions both in the context of joint market research and in the development of practical business applications.”
The bank’s blockchain platform will also allow participants to issue their own tokens and create smart contracts, and the integration with the bank's information systems makes it possible for users to make payments with smart contracts in rubles.
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Indonesia delays the rollout of its digital asset exchange
Indonesia has delayed the planned launch of a national exchange for digital asset companies until June 2023, according to Zulkifli Hasan, the country’s minister for trade.
Zulkifli made the announcement on Thursday, saying that government didn’t want to “rush” the rollout of the new exchange if it's not ready. This is the second time its launch has been delayed, as it was first scheduled to launch by the end of 2021, but was subsequently delayed to the end of 2022. Now, its debut has been pushed back another six months, with the possibility of future delays.
The delay has also given the government more time to review which companies meet their criteria to become part of the exchange. There are currently five active crypto exchanges registered in Indonesia, and the ministry’s crypto exchange could encompass all of them, Zulkifli said. The ministry’s exchange would act as a clearing house and custodian for the local crypto market while private exchanges facilitate trades.
Zulkifli has called on the public to work with the government and be patient with the rollout of the national crypto exchange. “Let us not rush because if it is not ready, things will get messy,” he said. “The government does not want this to massively take a toll on the public because people do not know much [about crypto trading].”
Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous country, has been increasing its crypto-related activities in recent months. In December, Bank Indonesia (BI) released a white paper outlining the central bank’s approach to creating its own central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital rupiah.
That same month, the government approved a new financial regulations framework that transferred the responsibility for crypto supervision from the Commodity Futures Trading Regulatory Agency, known in Indonesia as Bappebti, to the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The full transfer of power to the FSA will take place by 2024, and it is planned for the Indonesian exchange to be operational by that time.
