Good morning, David. So nice to see you. It's second day of Cybos. How is it going? What brings you here?
Good morning, Fifi. It's wonderful to see you again as well. What brings me here? So I'm here representing Six Digital Exchange, STX, which is part of Six Group. So here to see customers and partners, have conversations, meet new partners, discuss business opportunities and so on. It's great. It's great to connect with people in person again. It's been a while.
Do you see, in terms of the value that brings Cybos, how important is it to connect with people in person?
Well, I think the opportunity for spontaneous meetings that wouldn't otherwise have happened because it's hard to grab someone's attention when you're on a Zoom call as they're wandering past your stand, which we have been able to do here. So seeing people or them seeing me and actually having those get togethers and discussions that would otherwise not occur, that's fantastic. And also just being able to see how this incredible range of opportunities to see people in industry experts talking about the latest trends, what's happening within our sector. I did 10,000 steps last night. I went to bed really late.
How was your last night?
Extremely tame. I did about 10,000 steps as well, but went to bed early.
You're a better person than I am, David. Okay, next question. Where do you see the future of Web3 going? What role can the FS industry play?
So I think Web3 is a fascinating conversation, a fascinating topic. I think it's very broad and some discussion about what it even means as terminology. But we are very excited about the technology itself and what that means for the financial services sector. I think for us, we see it as being a long-term evolution and revolution within the technology space as we migrate from Web2 style infrastructure onto Web3 style infrastructure. What it means for consumers and for you and I as individuals, I think that has significant societal implications as we get to take control of our data, take control of our identity, and really build out that new way of actually interacting with each other driven by blockchain and wallet technology. As a provider, so we set up a specific SDX Web3 services business line where we're providing institutional grade technology, sort of a foundational technology to help our customers make that transition or develop and deploy solutions in that Web3 space.
And I think now clients, customers, you know, it's a new generation. People want to know what's happening with their data. You know, they want to see a clear path. So that's great that XJS is in front and center of providing this transparent view of it. Moving on, my next question is what challenges are banks facing when it comes to fully embracing Web3 and how do they overcome them?
So I think one of the first things in terms of challenges that the stack of technology that's available in the marketplace for them to actually take advantage of the underlying technologies and the services available are not what you consider to be institutional grade. So one of the first things that we've done is we rolled out the ability to actually stake Ethereum, so running nodes as a financial market infrastructure provider. So within our control environment, we're now running nodes on Ethereum and allowing institutional customers to then stake their Ethereum on us through a non-delegated, a non-custodial staking service. But then just today we announced the go live of our crypto custody solution. So providing that foundational layer of institutional grade crypto custody, again within that FMI sort of control framework that our customers have come to experience and expect from a trusted counterparty such as Six Group and SDX specifically.
That's great news. So that announcement was done today at CYBOS?
That announcement was done today at CYBOS only a few hours ago.
Thank you. My next question for you is, can you talk to us about the future of digital assets? What does this mean for banks?
A great, broad and exciting topic. So there is again a terminology issue. What do we mean by digital assets? And we see the world sort of kind of bifurcated but interconnected between digital securities where you're leveraging blockchain DLT technology to add efficiencies to existing asset classes such as fixed incomes, bonds and equities. So as SDX on the FMI side, our digital securities business, we're providing a DLT based digital assets exchange, but specifically providing the trading, custody and settlement of securities. So these are legally identical to traditional securities, just they exist and are traded and settled on the blockchain. There's a private permission blockchain that we manage at SDX leveraging R3's Corda technology. So that's one thing that we do. But the Web3 side of the business, the Web3 business line, that is specifically satisfying that crypto custody, the asset classes that have emerged from the new technology. So such as cryptocurrencies, governance tokens, NFTs and so on. So building out that custody solution and running nodes to secure those blockchains is a separate business line for us. But ultimately they sort of interoperate as it were at the custody level. So we custody both the digital securities and the crypto assets all within the same framework.
Thank you so much for spending time with us. What's the plan in the plan for the next few days?
So meeting more partners, having more conversations like this, learning more, always learn more about what's going on elsewhere within the industry and really sort of ensuring that we as SDX are having those conversations, understanding what our customers' needs are and building solutions for the future.
Thank you so much for your time.
You're very welcome, Fifi.