SMBC and Hashport announce experiment with Soulbound Tokens

On December 8, 2022, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) and its consolidated subsidiary Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) entered into a basic agreement on a business partnership with HashPort and its consolidated subsidiaries HashPalette and HashBank.

Overview of Basic Agreement

• SMBC Group and HashPort Group have been discussing the launch of a joint business for developing a safe and secure Web3 economic zone since signing a basic agreement in July 2022.
• Based on the outcomes of the aforementioned discussions, the parties concluded this basic agreement to commence specific deliberations toward launching a new joint business centered on practical use of Soulbound Tokens (SBTs).
• As the first phase of demonstration testing under this basic agreement, SMBC Group will issue SBTs on a trial basis with technical support from HashPort Group through the end of March 2023.
• As the second phase based on the results of the above testing, demonstration testing will be conducted envisioning scenarios in which SBTs are used as proof of behavior/career. Consideration will also be given in this phase to carrying out testing to produce case studies of SBT utilization with the cooperation of companies considering forming and marketing fan communities using tokens.
• In addition, the two parties will also consider undertaking content business associated with NFTs and developing infrastructure for the Web3 economic zone to encourage the spread of the token business both in Japan and overseas.

Demonstration Experiment

This week, SMBC issued a further press release, stating that the first phase of the demonstration experiment will verify the technical matters related to the issuance and holding of SBTs and accumulate know-how on community formation with SBTs. Thus, the project appears to have been slightly delayed from the original schedule outlined above, which saw such experiment being developed by the end of the fiscal year in March.

In this first phase of the demonstration experiment, the companies will distribute SBTs on the Pallette Chain, a blockchain provided by the HashPort Group. These SBTs authenticate the holder as an SMBC employee, and subsequently a fungible token called “Midoripo” will be circulated among experiment participants who are part of a community within SMBC Group’s in-house chat tool.

Within the community, chat rooms will be formed according to themes, and Midoripo will be sent as a token of appreciation to members who have made statements or actions that contribute to the community. SMBC plans to give benefits to participants who have more than a certain number of Midoripo at the end of the experiment.

After the completion of this phase, based on the knowledge cultivated in this experiment, the companies will design further experiments with the participation of other companies, in order to provide new added value that utilizes the characteristics of SBTs.

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