News

SnT Partners with VNX to Create Secure Marketplace for Digital Assets

  • Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT)
    Université / Administration centrale et Rectorat
    23 novembre 2018
  • Catégorie
    Recherche, Université

The University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) today announced their partnership with VNX Exchange, the trading platform for tokenized venture capital assets. Together they will  develop new levels of  network security for crypto assets. The signature ceremony took place in front of 150 members of the greater region’s Fintech and R&D community.

Custody – or the safeguarding of assets – has been the missing piece of cryptocurrency market infrastructure and this security gap has kept institutional investors and other interested parties out of the market. Through the partnership, SnT researchers will help to address this gap by designing new IT frameworks facilitating the secure exchange of digital assets on blockchain networks. The research will also assess several distributed ledger architectures. The two partners strive to contribute to the introduction of regulation and cyber security to blockchain, allowing the creation of reasonable rules that will balance the interests of all involved players.

“In creating a secure and regulatory compliant marketplace for the transparent trading of tokens representing digital assets we aim to introduce modern security mechanisms that could totally secure our platform and could impact the global cybersecurity market,” announced Alexander Tkachenko, VNX Exchange founder and CEO.

“This is an original use-case for blockchain,” says Dr. Radu State, expert in network security at SnT. “Broadly, we need to address two aspects – protecting against criminals who might try to hack the system to steal money or information, and guaranteeing compliance with anti-money laundering and KYC regulations. Traditional systems, where you have a user interface, a database, and a networking level to coordinate them, have been around for a long time, so we know how to protect them. However, for new, heterogeneous systems that issue tokens on the blockchain, there are still several important unsolved challenges. The first is security at the software layer – you need to ensure that there aren’t any vulnerabilities in the smart contracts that control the execution of individual transactions. The second is ensuring the security of the blockchain platform itself, based on both the consensus algorithm and access rights. And the third is ensuring the security of the database, where you need to provide end-users with proof that the platform is working as it should, while keeping the data on the platform”.

“We at VNX Exchange are delighted to work with SnT on the development of a secure marketplace for our customers. Their past research activities in FinTech have left us confident in their abilities,” said Alexander Tkachenko, VNX founder and CEO. “I believe that blockchain technology is the next big step in the financial sector’s evolution. This evolution will require three things: regulatory clarity, investor protection, and compatibility with current market standards. We hope that this partnership will make major strides in securing all three.”

The partnership between SnT and VNX aims to position Luxembourg further as a globally recognised financial centre, a world leader in the sphere of digital financial services and a financial technology hub.