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SK Telecom (SKT) has announced a collaboration with Aptos Labs, Brevan Howard, and Microsoft to deliver to the global financial market Aptos Ascend, a suite of end-to-end institutional solutions—including a permissioned network and Digital Asset Controls powered by SKT’s Wallet-as-a-Service product and the scalable, secure Aptos blockchain.

Aptos Ascend will also tap Brevan Howard’s industry leadership and expertise to develop a seamless path for any major bank or financial institution to begin offering digital currency and asset management to their clients responsibly and at scale.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) will be Aptos Labs’ preferred consulting partner, leveraging its global expertise in decentralised finance, digital assets, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to work with companies to implement the solutions. As one of the world’s leading management consulting firms, BCG has a strong track record in delivering and implementing large-scale digital transformations for major financial institutions.

“With a growing trend of tokenisation in traditional finance, we expect the partnership to create a strong model for innovation in the future financial market,” said Oh Se-hyeon, Vice President and Head of Web3 CO at SKT. “Built upon SKT’s trusted KYC/authentication business experience, T wallet (Wallet as a Service) aims to provide a stable platform for various crypto services to be provided with high reliability and security.”

“Global institutions require superior levels of compliance, security, trust, and innovation to service customers, operate across borders, and adhere to regulations at every level,” said Mo Shaikh, Co-Founder & CEO of Aptos Labs. “In collaboration with SKT, Brevan Howard, and Microsoft, Aptos Ascend will provide the world’s financial institutions, banks, and tech-forward money markets with a performant, compliant, secure, and scalable gateway to decentralized finance on Aptos that will evolve for years to come.”

“We see a tremendous opportunity at the intersection of AI and distributed ledger technologies and are pleased to support Aptos and the Ascend Project as they apply these technologies in financial services,” says Adrian Crockett, GM & Head of Product, Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services.

“We continue to have high conviction in the positive impact that the application of Web3 and blockchain technology will have on the financial services industry,” said Gautam Sharma, CEO & CIO of Brevan Howard Digital. “It is still early days, and we are pleased to support initiatives like Ascend that may help propel the industry forward.”

Aptos Ascend: Full of Features, a Game-Changer

In addition to bringing traditional finance giants, innovative FinTech partners, money market platforms, and global investment firms into the Web3 fold, Aptos Ascend will enable organisations to:

• Unlock unparalleled transaction efficiency with the Aptos blockchain thanks to an industry-leading sub-second latency—built for scale to achieve more than 30,000 transactions per second (TPS).
• Use the Move smart contract language and Digital Asset Controls, which provide secure asset management, privacy options, and formal verification of smart contracts, greatly reducing the risk of hacks.
• Collaborate with like-minded partners to build an extended ecosystem from the start to deliver scale from day one to encourage adoption.
• Further explore financial services solutions with dedicated support from the Aptos Labs’ engineering team to develop additional functions and features as required.

The institution-ready, end-to-end financial suite will use Microsoft Azure and Azure OpenAI Service, along with Brevan Howard’s international and market-specific investment expertise, and SKT’s regulatory-compliant Web3 technology, to pair innovative trade finance offerings with a decentralised, scalable, data-rich, and accessible network. Adding BCG’s strategic consulting expertise will enable Aptos Labs clients to implement the technology solutions seamlessly within their institutions. While the Aptos Ascend solutions will continue to evolve, immediate value at a global scale will take the form of:

• Expanding decentralised finance to institutional capital.
• Unlocking the uncollateralised lending market for Web3.
• Releasing the liquidity of tokenised assets on a global scale.

Aptos Ascend is designed to help regulated institutions around the world meet their obligations to customers, regulators, and other stakeholders. Further, Aptos Ascend includes unparalleled customizable configurations to meet specific business and regulatory requirements, including:

• Access controls to help institutions meet regulatory requirements.
• Controls over the types of transactions allowed and which entities can control transaction types.
• Tools to maintain account and transaction privacy.
• Embedded features for Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) checks and other regulatory considerations.

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