$500B Korean asset manager taps Polygon labs to develop tokenized securities network

Mirae Asset Securities, South Korea's largest financial group with over $500 in assets under management, said Thursday that it is working with Ethereum scaling platform Polygon Labs to advance tokenization within finance and boost adoption of Web3 technologies.

Polygon Labs will be a technical consultant in The Mirae Asset Security Token Working Group, which is working to create infrastructure to issue, exchange, and distribute tokenized securities, the asset manager said in the press release shared with CoinDesk.

The group includes several other companies, including Linger Studio and Coin Plug, and operates independently from Mirae, Hana Financial and SK Telecom's security token consortium, Next Finance Initiative (NFI).

"Polygon Labs is a leading global blockchain technology development company that is innovating throughout all aspects of Web3. Through technical collaboration with Polygon Labs, Mirae Asset Securities aims to establish global leadership in the field of tokenized securities," Ahn In-sung, head of the digital assets division at Mirae Asset Securities, said.

Tokenization involves bringing real-world assets, such as real estate, bonds, fine art, and equities, as digital tokens on a blockchain.

Several traditional finance giants, including Franklin Templeton and Hamilton Lane, a top-tier investment firm with over $823.9 billion in assets under management, have already initiated tokenization projects on Polygon. The Monetary Authority of Singapore's experimental tokenization initiative, Project Guardian, executed foreign exchange and sovereign bond transactions on Polygon last year.

Per Boston Consulting Group and investment firm ADDX, asset tokenization, as a business opportunity, is likely to increase 50 times to $16.1 trillion by 2030, accounting for 10% of the global gross domestic product.

Polygon Lab's Executive Chairman Sandeep Nailwal expects Mirae's efforts to boost the adoption of Web3 technologies in the financial industry.

“Mirae is a great example of a progressive, forward-looking company that aims to stay up to date with the constantly evolving world of digital finance. Its foray into tokenization will undoubtedly help accelerate the mass adoption of web3 among other financial institutions,” Nailwal said

“At the same time, Mirae’s initiatives will also greatly contribute to establishing interoperability between South Korea’s domestic financial systems and their foreign counterparts," he added.