SBI Group, one of Japan's largest financial companies, has partnered with the Solana Foundation to launch Japan's first on-chain financial markets.

 

According to a press release from SBI Group, the partnership aims to establish Japan as Asia's leading hub for on-chain finance by leveraging the Solana Foundation's Layer 1 blockchain technology and Japan's vast financial market.

 

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As part of the collaboration, SBI R3 Japan Co., Ltd. will tentatively change its trade name to SBI Solana Group Co., Ltd. Together with its shareholders, SBI Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc., SBI Group will pursue a new growth strategy that includes developing cross-border settlement infrastructure and supporting the issuance and distribution of stablecoins and tokenized real-world assets (RWAs).

 

SBI Group's partnership with the Solana Foundation comes shortly after the launch of JPYSC, Japan's first yen stablecoin backed by a trust bank. Issued by SBI subsidiary Shinsei Trust, JPYSC was launched to create a regulated, efficient yen based on a chain payment and liquidity infrastructure that bridges traditional finance (TradFi) and on-chain finance.

 

Unlike earlier funds-transfer or prepaid yen stablecoins, JPYSC has no transaction limit, making it suitable for use as a tradable asset by large institutions and corporations. It also offers significantly lower transaction costs than traditional payment methods.

 

JPYSC Lending Coming Soon

 

With the successful launch of the JPYSC stablecoin, SBI Group has announced the JPYSC Lending Service, a fixed-term lending product that allows users to lend their JPYSC holdings to SBI VC Trade, its cryptocurrency exchange subsidiary, and earn yield in return. Applications for the lending program will open on July 16, with the service scheduled to begin on July 23.

 

 

The Solana Foundation, in collaboration with blockchain security firm Asymetric Research, has launched new security initiatives aimed at strengthening the security of the Solana network.

 

In a blog post on Monday, the foundation announced the launch of new security initiatives designed to provide an extra layer of protection for protocols built on the network. Among these initiatives are STRIDE, a security framework, and SIRN, a network of security firms focused on protecting the Solana ecosystem.

 

 

The STRIDE Framework 

STRIDE, which stands for Solana Trust, Resilience and Infrastructure for DeFi Enterprises, is a structured security framework and program launched by the Solana Foundation. It is aimed at evaluating, monitoring, and escalating security across all projects built on the Solana network.

 

The STRIDE framework is built on eight key pillars: program security, governance and access control, oracle and dependency risk, infrastructure security, supply chain security, operational security, monitoring and incident response, and log management and forensics.

 

These pillars will be used by the foundation’s partner, Asymmetric Research, to evaluate the security strength of all protocols on the Solana blockchain. Protocols with a total value locked of more than $10 million that pass the STRIDE evaluation will receive continuous operational security and active threat monitoring, funded by Solana Foundation grants. The higher the evaluation result, the greater the level of protection and funding they will receive.

 

Protocols with a total value locked of more than $100 million that pass the STRIDE evaluation will also receive, in addition to grants, formal fund verification. The foundation describes this as a mathematical, proof based method that exhaustively guarantees the correctness of smart contracts.

 

The findings of the STRIDE framework will be published publicly. According to the foundation, this is intended to give users and investors insight into the protocols they use and rely on.

 

SIRN: A Network of Security Firms

Among the initiatives launched by the Solana Foundation is SIRN, short for Solana Incident Response Network, a network of security firms that will respond and act in the event of a security incident.

 

Although SIRN will be available to all blockchain protocols on the Solana network, priority will be given to protocols with higher total value locked, similar to the additional benefits that protocols with higher total value locked will receive under the STRIDE program.

 

Interested in knowing who makes up SIRN?

 

The Solana Incident Response Network comprises Asymmetric Research, OtterSec, Neodyme, Squads, and ZeroShadow, a combination of cybersecurity firms that includes Web3 and traditional security firms as well as a smart contract auditing firm.

 

Increase in DeFi attacks

The programming initiatives launched by the Solana Foundation are in response to the over $280 million attack on Drift Protocol, the largest decentralized perpetual exchange on the Solana blockchain. The attack is, so far, the most devastating DeFi attack this year and the second largest in the history of the Solana blockchain, following the 2022 Wormhole attack, which resulted in losses exceeding $325 million.

 

Step Finance, a DeFi aggregator built on Solana, was also affected by a DeFi hack earlier this year, which led to losses of about $40 million. According to DeFiLlama, over $168 million was stolen across 34 blockchain protocols in the first quarter of this year, prior to the Drift incident.