Bermudian-headquartered Keon Foundation Ltd has partnered with Boston-based Algorand as the layer-1 blockchain solution for its regulated decentralised finance asset management ecosystem.

The foundation, established this year as a non-profit exempted company limited by guarantee, is to serve as the virtual asset service provider (VASP) for the Keon Finance Ecosystem.

It said its initial focus would be on the development of KeonX, a permissioned, decentralised exchange designed to be one of the lowest cost DEX’s available, as well as the introduction of KeonFi, a marketplace where investors could explore and subscribe to investment strategies while maintaining complete custody of their assets.

A derivatives DEX (KeonXD), IDO (a crypto token offering run on a DEX) LaunchPad, Farm Auctions, and the Keon NFT marketplace are among the phase two products that will form a broader Keon Finance Ecosystem, the foundation said, all leveraging the Algorand blockchain.

The foundation plans to apply for a digital assets business license in Bermuda once the protocol is built, which will allow users to access Keon’s regulated products and services.

Lawrence Newhook, a director and member of the foundation, said: “It was imperative for us to select a layer-1 that is of institutional quality. As Keon is designed to be a regulated VASP, we needed a blockchain that is secure, scalable and flexible to ensure that digital asset issuances and transactions on the Keon ecosystem can adhere to securities laws in the jurisdictions of the ecosystem’s users.”

Kunall Parmar, chief technology officer of the Foundation, said: We evaluated a number of other chains, but none of them compared to Algorand. Given the complexity of the Keon Ecosystem and our ambitious plans for growth, we found them to offer the best technology.

“Algorand’s ASA Token standard and its programming infrastructure are more robust and offer increased features, flexibility and security over other level-1 blockchains, which is a significant advantage in the regulated space. Additionally, Algorand has had zero per cent downtime. That level of dependability is essential if we want institutions to participate.”

The foundation expects completion of the KEON token and smart contracts by early in the third quarter of this year.

“We're excited to welcome the Keon Foundation to the ever growing Algorand ecosystem," said Keli Callaghan, head of marketing at Algorand. "It's great to see yet another organisation leveraging best-in-class technology to accelerate tokenised asset management at the institutional level.”

Rahul Parmar, a director of the foundation, added: “We are thrilled to announce Keon’s suite of products on the Algorand blockchain. Algorand will serve as a fast and scalable layer to our ecosystem, and its users will benefit from Keon's array of DeFi products, which are conveniently brought together in a single ecosystem.”

He added: “This is just the beginning. While initial products and investment strategies will focus on digital assets, we see extraordinary potential in applying the underlying DeFi and blockchain technology to traditional assets and introducing them to the Algorand Blockchain.

“We are designing KeonFi to allow for the non-custodial management of investment strategies consisting of tokenised equities, fixed income or commodities and also to create virtual funds of tokenised real-world assets – that’s what’s most exciting to us, as it is the next phase in asset management.”

Algorand, which was founded by Turing Award-winning cryptographer Silvio Micali, said it was the technology of choice for more than 2,000 global organisations.