The partnership is set out in a memorandum of understanding (MoU). Under the agreement, the two companies plan to assess how institutional real-world assets (RWAs) can be structured, tokenised, and distributed onchain. Arbitrum, the blockchain platform built by Offchain, has been selected as the first network for this work.
SBI Digital Markets is a subsidiary of SBI Digital Asset Holdings, the digital asset arm of Japan-based SBI Group. Ember Protocol operates an investment platform for launching, accessing, and distributing institutional investment products and tokenised assets. Its services cover product structuring, issuance, ongoing operations, and links with investors across blockchains.
Division of roles across the product lifecycle
The collaboration pairs SBI Digital Markets’ work in asset origination, structuring, regulated financial services, and institutional distribution with Ember’s infrastructure for tokenisation, vault deployment, and liquidity. The companies intend to cover the full product lifecycle, not only a single stage. This includes how assets are structured and issued, how investors subscribe to and redeem products, and how those products reach settlement, secondary markets, and distribution across multiple networks.
Initial focus on Arbitrum
Deployment is currently targeted on Arbitrum. According to the companies, products deployed on the network enter existing markets where capital and participants are already active at scale. Explaining this, Steven Goldfeder, Co-Founder and CEO of Offchain, said that institutions issuing tokenised products want them to launch where liquidity and participants are already present. Goldfeder said Arbitrum provides tokenisation infrastructure alongside an established onchain financial ecosystem, so products can reach that activity from launch.
Arbitrum provides infrastructure for applications, tokenisation, and dedicated blockchain environments, and it hosts a financial ecosystem on Ethereum. Businesses running their own environments can configure execution, fee models, compliance, and governance. Those environments remain connected to shared liquidity and a global settlement layer.
Officials perspectives
Commenting on the collaboration, CK Ong, Acting Chief Executive Officer of SBI Digital Markets, stated that tokenisation is changing how investment products can be structured, issued, and distributed. Ong noted that the company had been seeking a DeFi-native partner able to bring RWAs onchain with attention to asset suitability and investor risk, as well as distribution. Ong added that the aim is to support the next stage of digital capital markets responsibly.
In addition, Ibra Barbery, Co-Founder of Ember Protocol, said that moving institutional assets onchain requires partners across both financial services and digital asset infrastructure. The official added that the combination of SBI Digital Markets’ institutional reach and Ember’s onchain infrastructure could support a new generation of tokenised investment products.
Because the agreement takes the form of an MoU and is framed as exploratory, no launch date, specific products, or asset classes have been disclosed so far.
