The investment bank Sberbank and the communications giant MTS claimed the realization of the first Russian commercial bond transaction using blockchain technology.
MTS revealed that it had placed 750 million rubles (about $ 12 million) of trade bonds on an exclusive blockchain platform, provided by the country's National Settlement Depository (NSD), fueled by smart contracts.
Based on the Hyperledger Fabric framework, developed by the Hyperlinkger consortium of the Linux Foundation, the blockchain platform made it possible to trace the "complete life cycle of securities" of the commercial bond denominated in rubles on a blockchain. The project and open-source and " source code of smarts contracts can be found on GitHub".
Qualified as securities , commercial bonds are generally placed on the OTC market. The MTS was issued with a six-month maturity period and an annual interest rate of 6.8 percent, said the telecommunications giant.
"The transaction was executed via the DVP (delivery versus payment) settlement assuming a simultaneous movement of fiat securities and money using the blockchain, the immutable registry for transaction recording" MTS
"The blockchain also allows the list of participants to dynamically change over time, allowing bonds to be issued to more investors at a later date. In this case, the three parties - the issuer, the central depository and the investor - had access to the decentralized register (the blockchain) to process the transaction. Each participant can digitally exchange documents online and track the status of the transaction in real time, which greatly speeds up the overall process. » Sberbank
According to the senior vice president and head of Sberbank CIB, Igor Bulantsev:
"This issuance of MTS bonds has not only allowed us to confirm the reliability, efficiency and security of the blockchain platform and to perform complex structured transactions involving securities, but also to demonstrate the potential of this technology to develop the digital economy of Russia. "
As noted earlier, the NSD of Russia started testing blockchain technology as early as April 2016 for an electronic proxy voting system at the time. Since then, the NSD has collaborated with its Chinese counterpart to develop blockchain applications in the post-market space, with a cooperative pact that would even grant "mutual access" to each other's markets.