According to a September announcement from Laser Digital and Keyring Network, the partnership combines institutional risk controls with permissioned DeFi infrastructure for qualifying participants. Laser Digital will act as risk governor, setting institutional risk standards and contributing governance standards, portfolio structuring and market practice. Keyring Network will handle access verification, quantitative risk parameters and liquidation design, while responsibilities between the firms will be determined separately for each contract based on the asset, strategy and risk profile. The collaboration addresses four major barriers to institutional participation in DeFi lending: permissioning, vulnerability risks, governance, and settlement. As per Laser Digital co-founder and CEO Jez Mohideen, institutional interest in on-chain fixed income stems from real opportunity, but constraints remain. The partnership focuses on building solutions to support assets whose behaviour resembles conventional fixed income instruments rather than speculative crypto tokens, while preserving the efficiency benefits of on-chain settlement. As per Keyring Network founder and CEO Alex McFarlane, fixed income is the largest global market, and despite multi-year exponential growth in tokenised assets, they haven't yet scratched the surface.
The framework combines scalable zero-knowledge permissioning, quantitative risk modeling, institutional governance standards, cyber insurance and risk-control mechanisms, as well as settlement technology through Keyring's [un]wind. The companies identified four constraints that have limited institutional participation: unrestricted access creating compliance issues, smart contract and protocol exploits with difficult-to-quantify risks, limited institutional oversight, and differences between traditional clearing processes and DeFi's instant settlement model. This makes participation on the borrower side costly, operationally inefficient and unnecessarily risky for lenders. The framework is designed to enable on-chain products to scale beyond today's DeFi liquidity base and support wider markets, with the first markets now ready to go live on Euler Finance. The next phase involves the phased rollout of these credit strategies on Euler Finance, followed by scaling the underlying infrastructure across additional partners and decentralized protocols.
The first lending markets are ready for deployment on Euler Finance, according to the companies, with plans to expand across additional protocols over time. Euler currently holds $368.8 million in total value locked across 17 chains and $555.4 million in outstanding loans, as per DefiLlama data. Euler has earned $1.48 million in fees over 30 days and $47,132 in protocol revenue, with most value locked on Monad at $240.6 million, followed by Ethereum at $88.9 million and Base at $18.9 million. The protocol has undergone leadership changes, with founding CEO Michael Bentley stepping down in January as the protocol refocused on institutions. Euler already supports institutional and tokenized assets, including VanEck's VBILL in May 2025, which allows investors to use tokenized U.S. Treasury fund as collateral for onchain borrowing. The protocol currently has approximately $377.5 million in total value locked, with Monad accounting for nearly $248.9 million and Ethereum at $92.7 million. Keyring Network has previously partnered with Euler on 'zkVerified markets', which are lending pools where participants prove compliance credentials without revealing underlying personal data, providing the technical groundwork for this integration. The project plans to expand to other DeFi protocols, potentially establishing a new compliant bond market native to blockchain technology.
Laser Digital was established by Nomura in 2022 and has expanded across multiple markets since then. In August, the subsidiary partnered with ZIGChain on products tied to emerging market private credit, PayFi, invoice financing, and stablecoin services, with ZIGChain targeting at least $100 million in total value locked across planned products. The Japanese subsidiary secured registration in Japan as a crypto asset exchange service provider in August, becoming the country's first newly registered entrant in roughly four years. Laser Digital is a full-service digital asset firm specializing in Trading, Asset Management, Solutions, and Early-Stage Investing, with Nomura established Laser Digital to provide new value in digital assets to its clients, bridging traditional and crypto markets. Laser Digital's operational headquarters are located in Dubai and Switzerland. The company has been moving toward credit for a year, with Keyring's own track record being in permissioning, having brought a zero-knowledge identity layer to DeFi vaults on Avalanche in August 2025.
According to Laser Digital co-founder and CEO Jez Mohideen, institutional interest in on-chain fixed income stems from real opportunity, but constraints remain. The companies are working on assets that behave more like conventional fixed income instruments while retaining onchain settlement. The partnership caters to the growing institutional demand for fixed income products in DeFi, initially focusing on lending and borrowing markets. The next phase involves the phased rollout of these credit strategies on Euler Finance, followed by scaling the underlying infrastructure across additional partners and decentralized protocols. The phased expansion plan suggests Euler won't be the only beneficiary, with additional protocols and strategies on the roadmap, meaning the compliance infrastructure Keyring builds could become a portable layer that plugs into multiple DeFi venues. Previously, in 2024, Laser Digital and Keyring Network completed a proof of concept for compliant USDC transfers, testing whether regulated stablecoin transactions could flow through DeFi infrastructure, generating enough confidence to move toward full product development. The companies have not disclosed the committed capital, fee split, launch date, or named borrower or lender for the current partnership.
