National Settlement Depository (NSD) announced that it began developing a technology to digitalize (tokenize) grain warehouse receipts.
Eddie Astanin, Chairman of NSD’s Executive Board, discussed the project’s goal at Finopolis, an innovative financial technologies forum, while he participated in the panel session “Blockchain Working for Business” (organized by FinTech Association).
“Russia is the largest grain exporter in the world, and our task is to accelerate this process. To develop national commodities market infrastructure, NSD and the Russian Agricultural Bank are implementing a pilot project to digitalize the process for registering grain and trading in this product using blockchain. In the pilot model, NSD will be a blockchain platform operator storing digital rights to the grain and settling transactions. We think that by utilizing the newest technologies the new model will minimize existing risks and costs on the commodities market, and will allow clients to conclude and settle transactions more effectively. If the pilot project succeeds, we will be able to scale it to other types of products, such as metal and coal, etc. Clear and full-scale regulation that includes laws and associated documents issued by regulators is a crucial factor for industrial use of the technology of digitalization on financial and commodities markets,’ said Eddie Astanin, Chairman of NSD’s Executive Board.