SEOUL,
South Korea, April 18,
2024 /PRNewswire/ -- SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM, "SKT")
today 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
decentralized finance, digital assets, and 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 tokenization 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."
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 organizations
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 decentralized, 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 decentralized finance to
institutional capital.
- Unlocking the uncollateralized lending market for
Web3.
- Releasing the liquidity of tokenized 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.
About SK Telecom
SK Telecom has been leading the growth of the mobile industry
since 1984. Now, it is taking customer experience to new heights by
extending beyond connectivity. By placing AI at the core of its
business, SK Telecom is rapidly transforming into an AI company
with a strong global presence. It is focusing on driving
innovations in areas of AI Infrastructure, AI Transformation (AIX)
and AI Service to deliver greater value for industry, society, and
life.
For more information, please contact skt_press@sk.com or visit our LinkedIn page
www.linkedin.com/company/sk-telecom.
Aptos Network
Aptos is a next-generation Layer 1 blockchain. Aptos'
breakthrough technology and programming language, Move, are
designed to evolve, improve performance and strengthen user
safeguards. Please visit https://www.aptosfoundation.org for
more information on the Aptos blockchain.
About Aptos Labs
Aptos Labs, co-founded by Mo
Shaikh and Avery Ching, is
dedicated to creating better network tooling and seamless usability
to bring the benefits of decentralization to the masses. Having now
raised over $400M, Aptos Labs is
backed by top-flight investors, including a16z, Jump
Crypto, Binance Labs, Dragonfly, PayPal
Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Franklin Templeton
Investments.
View original
content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/skt-collaborates-with-aptos-labs-brevan-howard-and-microsoft-to-bring-global-institutional-finance-on-chain-with-aptos-ascend-302121735.html
SOURCE SK Telecom