Aptos Labs, a blockchain startup established by former Meta Platforms Inc. personnel involved in the now-defunct Diem blockchain, has revealed its collaboration with prominent technology and financial companies to develop Aptos Ascend, a digital asset management platform tailored for financial institutions.
Functioning as a Layer 1 blockchain, Aptos Labs’ technology facilitates large-scale digital asset trading and transactions, positioning itself as a competitor to established blockchain ecosystems like Ethereum. Aptos Ascend comprises a comprehensive suite of solutions for institutional finance, offering permissioned digital asset controls to enable businesses to leverage tokenization and security through blockchain technology.
In the development of Aptos Ascend, Aptos Labs partnered with Microsoft Corp., SK Telecom Co. Ltd., and hedge fund management firm Brevan Howard to integrate various technologies for its blockchain-driven institutional service. The company plans to leverage Microsoft Azure and Azure OpenAI Service for artificial intelligence capabilities, in conjunction with Brevan Howard’s investment expertise and SK Telecom’s regulatory-compliant blockchain wallet-as-a-service technology, streamlining operational setup and ensuring compliance with regulations such as “Know Your Customer” and anti-money laundering (KYC/AML) requirements.
Mo Shaikh, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs, emphasized the necessity for global institutions to uphold high standards of compliance, security, trust, and innovation to cater to customers, expand internationally, and comply with diverse regulations. Aptos Ascend aims to offer financial institutions, banks, and progressive financial markets a performant, compliant, secure, and scalable gateway to decentralized finance through collaboration with SKT, Brevan Howard, and Microsoft.
Aptos Labs has selected Boston Consulting Group Inc. as its preferred consulting partner to assist clients in implementing decentralized finance, digital assets, and AI solutions due to BCG’s proven expertise in these domains.
Previously, Aptos Labs collaborated with Microsoft to develop AI blockchain solutions, resulting in the beta launch of Aptos Assistant, a chatbot capable of providing information on blockchain technology and programming. The partnership also explored additional blockchain-enabled solutions encompassing digital asset tokenization and decentralized finance.
Microsoft Cloud’s general manager and product head, Adrian Crockett, highlighted the significant potential at the convergence of AI and distributed ledger technologies.
Ascend offers financial institutions the capability to secure digital asset token transactions, restrict transactions to pre-approved entities, ensure confidentiality through zero-knowledge proofs, and automate transactions via programmable smart contracts using Aptos Move. This approach guarantees reliable transaction processing and maintains a fully auditable historical trail stored on the blockchain.
SKT’s Vice President and Web3 head, Oh Se-hyeon, expressed optimism about the partnership’s role in fostering innovation within the future financial market through the rising trend of tokenization in traditional finance.