Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, also known as Sber, develops its blockchain platform with Ethereum Blockchain. The bank officially made an announcement on Nov 30 to include new opportunities in its blockchain platform, which includes applications on the Ethereum network and smart contracts. The bank also informed that this step will help developers to move smart contracts, along with entire projects between the blockchain of Sber and the public blockchain.

The bank also announced to partner with one of the software cryptocurrency wallets, Metamask, that is used to interact with the Ethereum blockchain. According to the Sber statement, this integration will enable users to make operations with smart contracts along with tokens on the SBer blockchain network.

Alexander Nam, head of the blockchain lab pointed out that the new integrated features on the blockchain will allow the bank to bring together developers, financial institutions, and corporations to discover and explore more uses cases and applications of Web 3.0, blockchain, and decentralized finance. Nam said, “Sber Blockchain Lab works closely with external developers and partner companies, and I am glad that our community will be able to run DeFi applications on Sber’s infrastructure.

In the past few years, the bank, SBer has been continuously developing blockchain products as was reported earlier. In early 2021, Sber with the bank of Russia has been filling out applications to launch its own stablecoin, “Sbercoin” on a blockchain platform. However, it received approval from the Bank of Russia in the spring of 2022 and it finally announced its first digital currency deal. The govt of Russia holds 50% = 1 share, which makes it a major shareholder. 

The announcement for this integration on the blockchain recently came out, when Russian president Vladimir Putin criticized the monopoly in the world’s financial system and he called for an open lockchain-based settlement network. He also pointed out that technology-based digital currencies will give independence to the baking systems. However, at the same time, the Russian Governement does not allow its citizens, to make payments in other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin.