Altus Formalizes ‘Institutional Blockchain Foundry’ Push for Financial Firms

Altus, a South Korean blockchain company formerly known as B-Harvest, is expanding its institutional business to help financial firms build and operate blockchain services. The company said it wants to become a digital-asset infrastructure partner for financial institutions by drawing on expertise built over the past eight years.

Altus said on June 18 that it had formally defined its business identity to target domestic institutional demand for blockchain adoption. The company described its core identity as an "institutional blockchain foundry."

Altus is emphasizing that identity because it sees blockchain’s core value in improving existing financial services. Chief Executive Officer Lee Hyeong-yeon said institutions seeking to upgrade financial infrastructure through blockchain need more than a partner with technical expertise alone. They need a technology partner that understands both blockchain and the context of the financial industry, and has turned global market experience into working systems, Lee added.

Still, blockchain adoption has yet to move beyond proof-of-concept projects into live services in many cases. Demand from financial institutions is rising, but commercialization requires both core technical capabilities and a solid understanding of the financial industry. It also requires experience designing, building and operating digital-asset products such as real-world asset tokenization, stablecoin payments and on-chain trading.

Eight Years of Finance and Blockchain Expertise

For financial institutions, blockchain projects are not simply about adopting a new technology. Altus said institutional blockchain adoption involves complex decisions tied to client assets, transaction stability and regulatory compliance. Systems that work in testing environments often differ from those that can operate in live markets.

Altus said its accumulated technical capabilities position it to respond to growing institutional demand. Since its founding in 2018, the company has continued research and development in core blockchain technology and financial infrastructure for about eight years. It said its experience implementing and operating blockchain-based financial functions across mainnets, payments, tokenization and trading can serve as a foundation for helping institutional clients commercialize services.

Track Record in Turnkey Public Mainnet Deployment

Altus said its main competitive strength is the expertise it has built over eight years. The company said it has carried out four public mainnet projects, including Stable, AULT and Canto, on a turnkey basis from design through operations. On the back of that experience, Altus said it aims to serve as a long-term partner supporting institutional blockchain projects from business design to infrastructure build-out, operations and upgrades.

Lee said technology in traditional finance has largely been used to improve operating efficiency. In blockchain, by contrast, business needs are more deeply tied to the technology’s potential. Without a detailed understanding of the synergies between blockchain and existing financial services, a technology partner would struggle to design practical solutions, he said.

Altus also cited its experience designing, building and operating financial products on blockchain infrastructure as a key strength. The company said it has implemented financial functions such as real-world asset tokenization, stablecoin payments and on-chain trading across four blockchains.

More specifically, Altus said it designed tokenization systems backed by physical assets including silver, as well as Bitcoin-based tokenization systems, and built operating structures that complied with regulatory requirements. It also said it designed a cross-border payments blockchain based on Tether’s dollar-pegged stablecoin USDT, creating infrastructure that allows global payment service providers to process international payments more efficiently. The company said it has also built and operated order book-based on-chain spot and futures trading platforms.

Pursuing Long-Term Technology Partnerships

Altus said institutional digital-asset businesses need to aim for integrated services. Functions tied to digital assets — from token issuance and investor management to trading, collateral, payment, settlement and redemption — may appear separate, but in live service environments they need to operate as one consistent flow. The company said its experience operating blockchain-based financial services including mainnets, payments, tokenization and trading is closely aligned with designing such integrated services.

An Altus official said institutions adopting blockchain need more than infrastructure development. They also need an understanding of business objectives, workflow design, and regulatory and operational risks. With experience in both digital-asset infrastructure and financial products, Altus can design and implement each function as part of a single workflow, the official added.

Altus also pointed to its Forward Deployed Engineering, or FDE, model as a strength. The approach involves working closely with partners from the planning stage, when business goals and direction are set, through system construction, operations and feature expansion. Altus said FDE differs from outsourced development models in which a system is handed over to the client once it is built. Its approach is to take long-term responsibility for projects from design to operations and upgrades.

The company said it adopted the FDE model because blockchain infrastructure requires more than initial deployment. It also requires agile responses to changes in global financial markets, including security issues and protocol upgrades. Lee said technical systems must be designed around sophisticated business logic and business objectives, and must continue to evolve. That requires long-term, close collaboration with clients.

Altus said the FDE model also gives partner companies a way to build blockchain technology and business expertise. Rather than relying on outsourced development to fix one-off problems in an existing service, the structure allows both sides to design future improvements together. That is one reason the company emphasizes long-term partnerships.

More than half of Altus’s workforce of about 40 employees are senior-level engineers, the company said. Staff backgrounds include Kakao, Samsung Electronics, KB Kookmin Bank, Deutsche Bank and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.

Lee, who leads Altus, studied mathematics at POSTECH and later earned a master’s degree in finance from the University of Reading in the U.K. He then worked at South Korean financial institutions including Meritz Securities before moving into the field as a specialist spanning technology and finance. Lee said he focused on bringing together talent from finance and blockchain into a single team. To build an organization optimized for FDE, the company has also fostered a culture that emphasizes logical thinking and client communication, he added.