S&P Global has announced the acquisition of OpenZeppelin, a prominent smart contract and blockchain security specialist. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
According to the companies, the acquisition is intended to integrate OpenZeppelin’s security and development services into S&P Global’s digital asset capabilities, focusing on the creation of future on-chain security assessments and benchmarks.
Established in 2015, OpenZeppelin provides on-chain security assessments and development services alongside the world’s leading open-source Solidity smart contracts library. Its smart contracts secure more than $37 trillion in transaction volume, safeguarding major stablecoins and tokenised assets. Having completed over 900 security reviews, OpenZeppelin is highly regarded for both DeFi protocols and traditional financial institutions building today’s digital asset infrastructure.“Our digital assets strategy centres on bringing trusted data, benchmarks and transparent risk assessment to markets as they move onchain,” says Yann Le Pallec, President, S&P Global Ratings. “As digital assets and tokenised markets continue to mature, OpenZeppelin’s technology and expertise will complement our smart contract and on-chain technology risk assessment capabilities, giving traditional financial institutions and DeFi-native companies alike the confidence to build and transact in this new environment.”
Through this acquisition, S&P Global expands its risk assessment capabilities into on-chain technology and financial products. Simultaneously, its brand, institutional relationships, and global network will accelerate OpenZeppelin’s expansion into traditional finance.
“OpenZeppelin’s standards, technology, and expertise already power the infrastructure behind the world’s leading stablecoins, tokenised funds, DeFi protocols, and on-chain markets,” says Demian Brener, CEO, OpenZeppelin. “With S&P Global, that foundation reaches a broader set of organisations entering this market, as well as the blockchain networks and DeFi protocols gaining institutional adoption.”
OpenZeppelin will continue to operate as its own business unit under the OpenZeppelin name. Brener will continue to lead the business, reporting to Le Pallec.
The OpenZeppelin deal isn’t the only digital assets investment that S&P Global has been busy with in recent days. It has also led a strategic investment in digital asset data provider Kaiko, extending the company’s Series B funding to $110 million as it expands its data infrastructure for tokenised markets. Kaiko provides institutional market data covering more than 150 digital asset exchanges and protocols. It is extending this into on-chain capital markets, including delivering market data to smart contracts and standardising on-chain activity for off-chain consumption.
Last year, S&P Global made a strategic investment in the Canton Network, a privacy-enabled, interoperable blockchain built for institutional financial markets by Digital Asset.
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