HONG KONG, April 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- At the Hong Kong Web3 Festival 2025, Henry Ma, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer of WeBank, as well as Director of WeBank Technology Services, unveiled a blockchain-based inter-institutional "value exchange infrastructure" solution aimed at supporting the prosperity of Hong Kong's Web3 ecosystem. As Hong Kong actively integrate Web3 into its traditional financial system, this solution, with a balance among efficiency, security, and compliance, strives to accelerate the implementation of innovative and regulated use cases such as stablecoins and real-world asset tokenization (RWA).
In recent years, Hong Kong has introduced a series of policies to guide the compliant development of Web3 and to attract global fintech institutions to actively engage in the Hong Kong Web3 ecosystem. As institutional trading models continue to evolve, the expanding market scale has begun to expose limitations in the current Web3 trading framework, making it increasingly difficult to meet the diverse needs of value exchange between institutions.
Ma analyzed the pain points of four existing models: (1) A single Layer 1 blockchain cannot support virtual assets other than its native cryptocurrency. (2) Over-the-counter (OTC) trading heavily relies on the credibility of counterparties. (3) Decentralized exchanges require assets wrapped from multiple chains onto a single chain, which reduces asset liquidity. (4) Centralized exchanges require users to relinquish control of their private keys, while user experience has to compromise with the complex trading processes.
Is there a feasible solution that balances the needs for efficiency, security, and compliance? Ma suggested the necessity of a common infrastructure to support the access of different types of assets, ensure transaction and asset security through an "atomic swap[1]" mechanism, and establish access protocols to ensure that both parties involved in transactions are compliant, licensed institutions within a regulated framework.
To implement this vision, blockchain technology serves as the backbone. Ma advocates that by returning to the core principles of blockchain technology, we can fully leverage its role as a trust machine and build a secure and reliable infrastructure for value exchange.
At the conference, WeBank Technology Services officially launched POTOS (Portal of the Orient Symposium for Web3), a blockchain infrastructure designed for Hong Kong's Web3 ecosystem. At its initial stage, POTOS focuses on a "value exchange infrastructure" solution that provides three layers of assurance for institutional value exchange: (1) a high-performance underlying chain is built to connect different types of assets. (2) Trusted cross-chain protocols and smart contracts are introduced to enable atomic exchanges of assets across multiple chains between institutions. (3) Technologies such as multi-group structures and zero-knowledge proofs are integrated to create "value exchange group," ensuring transaction security and regulatory compliance.
"We hope that this value exchange evolution, driven by the 'trust machine,' can truly solidify the foundation of trust for the advancement of Hong Kong's Web3 ecosystem," said Ma. He emphasized that WeBank Technology Services, a wholly-owned subsidiary of WeBank in Hong Kong, will continue to leverage WeBank's extensive experience in the blockchain sector to support Hong Kong in upgrading its value exchange infrastructure. This effort aims to attract more institutions to position Hong Kong as a hub for compliant and innovative Web3 practices.
The technical foundation of POTOS comes from the FISCO BCOS blockchain platform, an open-source initiative led by WeBank. POTOS inherits its financial-grade performance and openness that define its core capabilities. Since its full open-sourcing in 2017, the platform has demonstrated a single-chain processing capacity of up to 200,000 TPS while supporting horizontal scalability. It has been successfully applied in over 500 digital transformation projects, including the "Shenzhen-Hong Kong Cross-border Data Verification Platform," establishing an open-source community that includes more than 5,000 institutions and over 100,000 individuals. FISCO BCOS has become a de facto standard for blockchain technology.
About WeBank Technology Services
Launched in Hong Kong in June 2024, WeBank Technology Services sets out to leverage WeBank's cutting-edge fintech capabilities and digital finance best practice to deliver a variety of superior digital finance and digital infrastructure solutions to digital banks, financial institutions, government agencies, and industry partners worldwide. In October 2024, WeBank Technology Services joined the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's Ensemble framework working group, offering blockchain technology support to drive innovation and development in Hong Kong's tokenization market.
About WeBank
Launched in 2014, WeBank Co., Ltd. ("WeBank") is the first digital bank in China. WeBank provides convenient financial services to micro-, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) and the public, and continuously improves the quality of services in response to customers' specific needs. WeBank has served over 420 million retail customers and 5.8 million enterprises. As a digital bank, WeBank focuses on innovation and technology, and leads the industry in core technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain, cloud computing, and big data.
[1] Atomic Swap is an asset exchange mechanism based on blockchain technology. It ensures that cross-chain asset exchanges are completed simultaneously, akin to a face-to-face cash-and-goods exchange, effectively eliminating the risk of counterparty default.
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WeBank Technology Services Launches Value Exchange Infrastructure to Boost Hong Kong's Web3 Ecosystem
