Under an agreement signed last week with the Linux Foundation, Sberbank, the Russian savings giant, is joining the Hyperledger Project.
Launched in December 2015, the Hyperledger Project defines itself as “a collaborative effort created to advance blockchain technology by identifying and addressing important features for a cross-industry open standard for distributed ledgers that can transform the way business transactions are conducted globally.”
The agreement was inked by the bank’s first deputy chairman Lev Khasis and Hyperledger CEO Brian Behlendorf during the Sibos banking and financial conference in Geneva.
“Participation in the project opens for us access to international expertise and to the most advanced developments in the field of blockchain,” the Russian online publication Bankir.ru quoted Khasis as saying.
Dedicated team
“We’ll get the opportunity to directly influence platform development and interact with its key developers,” he added.
Khasis also told the media that a “dedicated team” of Sberbank developers will work on the Hyperledger Project, and that such technology may be applied to industries beyond the financial sectors, such as real estate.
It is not the first time when Sberbank shows interest in participating in blockchain developments at the international level. In late 2015, the bank sought to join the R3-led banking blockchain consoritum, as noted by Cryptocoin News.
“As soon as [R3’s protocols, standards and technology] will be implemented, we believe we will be among the first to take part in it,” Khasis was quoted as saying.
On his side, Sberbank’s CEO German Gref has criticized the Russian authorities’ harsh regulatory stance against cryptocurrencies. Thus in May 2016, Gref opposed a draft bill to ban bitcoin in Russia, noting that such legislation would create an obstacle to technological progress in Russia.
Industry consortium and venture deals
Sberbank, however, is not the only Russian player to show interest in blockchain technology. During the Sibos event in Geneva, as reported by Cryptocoins News, Russia’s National Settlement Depository (NSD) and South Africa’s Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) signed a Letter of Intent to forge a partnership that will develop solutions utilizing blockchain – or the Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT).
This past July major companies from the Russian financial industry announced the creation of a consortium for joint exploration and project implementation in the field of blockchain and related technologies. These companies included Accenture, BINBANK, MDM Bank, Bank Otkritie, QIWI Group and Tinkoff Bank.
Earlier this year, Russia’s central bank created a working group to implement fintech innovation in cooperation with market players. Among the fields of investigation of this working group are blockchain technologies and the way they are, or could be used in financial markets, both in Russia and abroad.
The institution has also formed a new department dedicated new financial technologies, related projects and processes.
On the venture side, Life.Sreda, a fund with Russian origins now headquartered in Singapore, launched in May a new venture fund dedicated to investing in the blockchain ecosystem. Christened ‘BB Fund,’ the new fund aims to provide start-up capital for early stage blockchain companies that have use cases relevant to banks.
In July last year iTech Capital, another fund with Russian origins, took part in a $20 million round of financing for BitFury, a bitcoin blockchain infrastructure provider and transaction processing company.
