Per a report from a Russian news agency, Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia by total assets, is planning to deploy a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform that is compatible with Ethereum, the largest smart contract network.
According to the report, the new DeFi platform is planned to launch by May 2023.
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Going by the United Nations brief, Sberbank is a majority state-owned bank that is home to one-third of all aggregate banking assets in Russia.
The bank reportedly hopes to begin open testing on the DeFi platform in March and fully open it up by the end of April with the possibility of conducting commercial operations.
The platform’s customers will be able to use the popular non-custodial wallet MetaMask, according to Konstantin Klimenko, Sberbank’s blockchain laboratory product director. Klimenko says he believes DeFi could displace traditional banking.
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The European Union (EU) introduced a round of crypto-related sanctions on Russia in October in response to the country’s continued military aggression against Ukraine.
The sanctions involved banning all wallet and custody services to Russia, and they came just weeks after the Russian Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Russia acknowledged it was necessary to soon enable cross-border crypto payments.
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