- SMBC Nikko Securities, Nethermind, Uniswap Labs, Base, and Nyx Foundation signed a memorandum of understanding on October 2, 2026 to develop a Japan-focused “DeFi Gateway”
- The gateway will use Uniswap v4 hooks to build regulatory-compliant liquidity pools with anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing controls built in
- The five organizations target mid-2027 completion and plan to share progress with Japan’s Financial Services Agency to help shape the country’s regulatory approach to DeFi
SMBC Nikko Securities announced in an official release dated October 2, 2026 that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Nethermind, Uniswap Labs, Base, and Nyx Foundation to develop secure, institutional-grade infrastructure enabling access to decentralized finance in Japan, an initiative the five organizations are calling the DeFi Gateway.
Under the agreement, SMBC Nikko will lead regulatory dialogue and compliance expertise for the project, while Nethermind handles technical design and smart contract security. Uniswap Labs contributes protocol integration expertise, Base supports ecosystem deployment, and Nyx Foundation advises on market-making strategies for the liquidity pools the project intends to build. The DeFi Gateway is envisioned as a liquidity provisioning protocol paired with custom, regulatory-compliant liquidity pools built on Uniswap v4 hooks, which allow anti-money laundering and counterterrorism financing controls to be embedded directly into the smart contracts that run the pools.
The companies plan to create AI-powered investment vaults with simplified user interfaces alongside the compliant liquidity pools, aiming to make decentralized finance usable for Japanese institutions that have so far stayed on the sidelines over concerns about regulatory exposure and operational risk. The project targets completion by mid-2027, and no product has launched yet; the five parties describe the current agreement as the starting point for a joint development effort rather than a finished platform.
SMBC Nikko said it will share the project’s progress with Japan’s Financial Services Agency as the work proceeds, a step intended to help inform the regulator’s broader framework for DeFi oversight as Japan continues building out its digital asset rules. The announcement builds on an earlier, narrower research collaboration between SMBC Nikko and Nethermind first disclosed in March 2026, which focused on institutional investor onboarding through liquidity provision to automated market makers.
The partnership reflects a broader push by major Japanese financial institutions to find a compliant path into decentralized finance rather than treating DeFi purely as a retail or offshore phenomenon to be avoided. By building AML and counterterrorism-financing controls directly into the liquidity pools through Uniswap’s hook architecture, the DeFi Gateway consortium is betting it can satisfy Japanese regulatory expectations while still giving institutions access to the capital efficiency and transparency that have made automated market makers attractive relative to traditional over-the-counter liquidity arrangements.
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