Société Générale
Société Générale are the 3rd biggest bank in France by assets and the 7th biggest in Europe. They have over 146,000 employees and turnover over €23 billion.
They have in the past worked with Tezos to test the implementation of a potential CDBC for Banque De France experiments.
They had also been involved in the EURL Lugh stablecoin being developed by a consortium including retail giant Casino Group, where the bank would be storing the stablecoin.
METACO Harmonize
METACO was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Switzerland. The company enables financial and non-financial institutions to capitalize on the digital asset economy, offering a range of custody, trading and DeFi solutions.
The main product of the METACO company is called ‘Harmonize’, which is an orchestration system for digital assets.
The Harmonize platform allows institutions to issue, store, trade and manage cryptocurrencies and digital assets.
It provides a single platform allowing for ‘…multiple custody, trading and tokenization solutions into a unified operating system, available as SaaS Cloud or on-premise.’
Orchestration in this sense means that the one platform is able to orchestrate and control many elements of a digital asset stack, which might often need separate platforms (i.e. custody and DeFi).
It also ensures that full compliance can be achieved throughout the stack. This makes METACO’s Harmonize solution flexible and efficient, whilst ensuring regulations for digital assets can always be followed.
Société Générale, METACO & Tezos
On May 4th, it was announced that METACO had integrated Tezos and Tezos staking into its Harmonize digital asset solution.
Adrien Treccani, CEO and Founder at METACO said:
As the institutional adoption of digital assets accelerates, investors are gaining a broader appetite for crypto assets, with interest in the areas of DeFi, staking, and tokenization gathering momentum. As a result, orchestration of these complex capabilities and interactions across an increasingly diverse set of digital asset applications has become a core need for many institutions.
METACO Harmonize, our digital asset orchestration system, provides institutions with the requisite flexibility to address this need. Integrating Tezos, a leading proof-of-stake blockchain, into our orchestration system demonstrates our industry-leading innovation in delivering clients the cutting-edge technology and flexibility they need to stay apace with the rapidly evolving digital assets ecosystem.
It was stated that the integration would: ‘…enable institutions to manage a comprehensive list of functionalities on the Tezos blockchain, including staking capabilities, via both delegated staking services, which allow clients to generate low-interest rewards from joining shared staking pools, or staking directly to dedicated validators.’
According to METACO there was a market demand for institutional-grade staking infrastructure.
On June 30th, it was announced that Société Générale FORGE had partnered with METACO to expand its institutional digital asset capabilities.
Société Générale FORGE chose METACO in order to use its bank-grade digital asset custody and orchestration platform, Harmonize, to further expand its offering at scale.
In the partnership press release Tezos was mentioned:
“Societe Generale is now offering a range of capital market products to institutional clients under a native security token format on Ethereum and Tezos with full banking level safety and regulatory compliance.”
The timing for this partnership and the use of a native security token format on Tezos with full banking level safety and regulatory compliance seems positive as the EU looks to bring forward new frameworks for digital assets.
The press release also covered this changing EU environment:
“These developments are taking place within a larger context marked by the acceleration of market digitalization using blockchain technology, notably through the forthcoming implementation of the EU Pilot Regime and which will permit the processing of security tokens through market infrastructures in compatibility with applicable EU regulations.”
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