$316B Financial Giant Partners with Ava Labs to Revolutionize Fund Management Through Blockchain

Wall Street meets Web3 in landmark blockchain move that could reshape trillion-dollar fund industry.

BREAKING: Traditional finance's $316 billion heavyweight just placed its biggest bet yet on blockchain technology—signing a memorandum of understanding with Ava Labs to develop next-generation fund solutions.

THE PARTNERSHIP

Ava Labs' Avalanche blockchain will power the development of streamlined fund management tools—cutting settlement times from days to seconds and bypassing traditional intermediaries. The collaboration targets everything from tokenized assets to automated compliance protocols.

WHY IT MATTERS

This isn't just another pilot program—it's a strategic move by a financial institution managing assets equivalent to Portugal's GDP. The partnership signals that blockchain adoption has moved beyond experimentation phase into core infrastructure development.

THE BIGGER PICTURE

While traditional finance continues debating blockchain's merits, this $316 billion player just decided to build rather than wait. Because nothing motivates legacy institutions like seeing competitors potentially bypass their entire business model—except maybe the fear of missing out on actually making money.

One cynical take? It only took traditional finance eight years to realize blockchain might be useful for something beyond speculative trading. Progress.

Mirae Asset Global Investments and Ava Labs, the developer behind the Avalanche blockchain, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on Thursday to jointly develop fund tokenization and on-chain operation and settlement systems, the firms said.

Avalanche said on X (formerly Twitter), “By combining Mirae’s $316B scale with Avalanche’s institutional-grade blockchain, the two firms aim to set new standards for tokenized funds — where global capital connects with next-generation technology.”

Under the agreement, the two companies will undertake joint research and feasibility studies on tokenizing fund products, work to connect with the global institutional ecosystem and run pilot projects to build out on-chain operations and payment rails. The partnership is explicitly aimed at turning select Mirae Asset products into tokenised instruments where local rules allow, and at building the operational backbone, custody, settlement and payments, needed to run them at scale.

Mirae Asset said it will leverage Avalanche’s high throughput, low latency and enterprise-focused Layer-1 infrastructure to pilot tokenization in key jurisdictions such as the United States and Hong Kong, markets where regulatory frameworks are developing and, in some cases, already permit tokenized financial products. The goal is to create a scalable tokenization framework that can be applied across Mirae Asset’s international fund lineup.

Accelerating its Digital Transformation

Founded in 2003 with the launch of a Hong Kong subsidiary, the firm’s first overseas foothold, Mirae Asset has grown into a global manager operating across 16 regions, with overseas assets making up about 45% of its total assets under management. The company said the collaboration with Ava Labs is a strategic step in accelerating its digital transformation and expanding client investment options.

Ava Labs, which develops and maintains the Avalanche mainnet, has been working with a range of financial and public-sector partners to demonstrate real-world use cases for tokenization and programmable money, from experiments with major banks to support for national-scale stablecoins and regulated, fiat-backed tokens.

Recent projects involving Avalanche include proof-of-concept with banks and the deployment of state and sovereign-backed stablecoin initiatives, showing the network’s emphasis on speed, compliance and institutional tooling.

John Nahas, Chief Business Officer of Ava Labs, stated, “Tokenization is becoming a new standard in global finance, and this partnership reflects a trend extending beyond Asia to the world. The combination of Mirae Asset’s global asset management scale and Avalanche’s institutional-grade infrastructure will accelerate the future of on-chain asset management.”

Kim Young-hwan, President of Mirae Asset’s Innovation and Global Management Division, described the MOU as a “key step in strengthening our digital transformation capabilities as a global asset manager.” He added that pairing Ava Labs’ blockchain technology with Mirae Asset’s product and operational expertise will help speed tokenization of real-world assets (RWA), offer new investment experiences to clients and position the firm as a leader in the evolving digital asset management market.

The deal follows a wider push by traditional financial players to trial tokenized securities and payments rails on permissioned and permission-less networks alike. If the pilots between Mirae Asset and Ava Labs succeed, they could accelerate institutional adoption by demonstrating operational workflows, issuance, custody, settlement and fiat on- and off-ramps that meet regulatory and investor requirements.

Mirae Asset and Ava Labs plan to begin joint studies and pilot work immediately; the two firms said further details on pilot timing and specific products will be announced as those projects progress.