NSD and Waves kickstart development of Crypto Assets platform

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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 1st half 2018. Project implementation depends not only upon 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 synchronize 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.”

National Settlement Depository (NSD), a part of the Moscow Exchange Group, is the central securities depository* of the Russian Federation.

NSD was founded 27 June 1996. On 30 June 2017, the value of securities under custody amounted to RUB 35.5 trillion. The Bank of Russia recognized NSD as a systemically important central securities depository, settlement depository, and repository. The NSD payment system has the status of a systemically and nationally important system.

NSD offers a wide range of services to its clients, including: settlement and depository services, OTC transaction registration (repository services), information services, and collateral management services. As Russia’s national numbering agency and the substitute numbering agency for the CIS, NSD is authorized to assign international ISIN and CFI codes. NSD has the status of a pre-Local Operating Unit (pre-LOU), which allows it to assign Legal Entity Identifiers (LEIs) to corporate clients. The Bank of Russia has assigned NSD the status of an operator of the NSD Payment System (registered name).

NSD conducts all exchange settlements and a major part of OTC settlements, and also services Russian and foreign securities as the central securities depository. Currently, NSD has accounts with central securities depositories and international central securities depositories of eight countries, as well as correspondent accounts with major foreign and Russian banks. NSD services securities issued by companies representing more than 40 countries. The international rating agency Thomas Murray has assigned NSD an AA- rating as a central securities depository.

For additional information about NSD please visit www.nsd.ru/en.

*The central securities depository status was assigned to NSD by the Russian Federal Financial Markets Services’ Order №12-2761/PZ-I (dated 6 November 2012). NSD holds professional securities market participant license №045-12042-000100 for depository operations issued by the Russian Federal Financial Markets Services (19 February 2009), license №3294 for banking operations issued by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (4 August 2016), license №045-00004-000010 for clearing activities issued by the Russian Federal Financial Markets Services (20 December 2012), and license №045-01 for repository operations issued by the Bank of Russia (28 December 2016).

Waves Platform is a decentralized platform for launching crowdfunding campaigns and issuing digital assets. It is the largest Blockchain project to originate from Russia. The Waves encryption platform is primarily designed to support the issuance, trade and exchange of digital assets/tokens using Blockchain technology. The project is characterized by its emphasis on usability and widespread application. It is supposed to use Proof-of-Stake as its consensus algorithm. Waves Platform completed its Initial Coin Offering in June 2016, garnering more than $16 million (30,000 BTC).