D3 Unveiled: Russian Platform Would Turn Legacy CSDs into Crypto Custodians

Executives of Russia's National Settlement Depository have revealed new details about a plan to build a blockchain-based depository platform for safeguarding crypto assets.

The platform, separate from the NSD itself, is designed to turn traditional financial market infrastructures into compliant custodians of digital currencies and tokens.

Because part of the bridge D3 is expected to provide between traditional centralized assets and these new decentralized counterparts is an anti-money laundering program, the platform is constructed to make it easier for regulators to gain insight into who owns which assets.

The securities depository will look to integrate both cryptocurrency exchanges and traditional custodians into the D3 platform.

In this way, the NSD's head of decentralized solutions, Alexander Yakovlev, explained, the platform could eventually result in something similar to a bank, but for crypto assets.

By using a system familiar to existing financial institutions, the builders of D3 are trying to make integration of the platform as easy as possible.

While part of D3 has been built on decentralized trading solution Waves, NSD is currently in talks with several other blockchain teams, including Hyperledger Fabric, so that its platform can custody and manage any kind of token, no matter what blockchain it is built on.

That desire is, in part, a component of the NSD's belief that the D3 platform could be a place where ICO issuers hold their annual general meetings.

Because D3 will provide the NSD insight into who owns how many shares of which tokens, Yakovlev believes the platform will be integral for ICO issuers when they decide to hold annual general meetings of their own.

Correction: This article has been updated to correct the descriptions of D3 and of Waves' role in the project, and to clarify that D3 is a separate entity from the NSD..