Jito Foundation Announces Partnership with Wavebridge and Joins Korea's Leading Financial Institutions to Launch Digital Asset Working Group

A first-of-its-kind coalition assembles the entire digital asset ETF stack in Korea, from index construction to custody, regulation, and staking infrastructure, as the country opens its markets to institutional crypto adoption.

SEOUL, July 27, 2026 – Jito Foundation announced the formation of the Korea Digital Asset Working Group, a strategic partnership with Wavebridge and a coalition of Korea's leading financial and digital asset institutions. The group unites, for the first time, every layer of the digital asset ETF stack in Korea under a single, compliance-first initiative, from index construction and custody to regulatory guidance and staking infrastructure.

The working group's initial project is to produce a joint research report on digital asset ETFs and related financial products in Korea, scheduled for release during Korea Blockchain Week.

Market Context

Korea is in the middle of the most significant shift in its digital asset markets since 2022. In January 2026, the government lifted its nine-year ban on corporate crypto investment and deployed a national strategy to approve spot digital asset ETFs and finalize stablecoin legislation this year. Korean banks and securities firms have responded with a wave of activity, acquiring exchange equity and moving to establish standards across stablecoins, tokenization, and custody. Tiger Research has mapped 150 institutions and 196 partnerships forming across the market ahead of full regulatory clarity.

What has been missing is coordination. Most digital asset ETF efforts in Korea are fragmented across individual players and stuck at the MOU stage, waiting on legislation to provide clearer guidance. The Korea Digital Asset Working Group is built to solve that, uniting each layer of the ecosystem so that when the regulatory framework lands, the infrastructure to build institutional-grade products is already in place.

“Korea is opening its markets to institutional digital assets faster than almost anywhere in the world, but the infrastructure to build these products has been fragmented. This working group changes that. By bringing the full stack together, from index construction to custody, staking, and regulatory counsel, we are making sure that when the regulatory framework lands, Korea is ready to build institutional-grade products on day one. We are proud to have the trust of our innovative Korean institution partners so we could bring our JitoSOL liquid staking expertise to that effort," said Marc Liew, Head of APAC at Jito Foundation

Wavebridge's Role

As an institutional crypto prime broker working with the most forward-thinking innovators in the Korean market, Wavebridge has identified JitoSOL as the pristine institutional digital asset for building yield-bearing products. Wavebridge is leading the coordination effort across the working group, convening each layer of the stack and driving the roadmap for how these institutional-grade products come to market in Korea.

"We built this working group because Korea's institutional demand is real and accelerating, but the pieces to serve it have been scattered. As a prime broker, we sit at the center of institutional flows, and we kept seeing the same gap: everyone was building toward digital asset products in isolation. By bringing custody, issuance, index, staking, and regulatory counsel to one table, we can move from fragmented effort to a coordinated roadmap. We identified JitoSOL as the pristine institutional asset to build around because it delivers real, network-generated yield in a form institutions can actually hold and deploy," said Jongwook Oh, CEO at Wavebridge.

A Full-Stack Coalition

The working group brings together seven organizations, each owning a distinct layer of the digital asset product lifecycle:

• Jito Foundation,  pioneering Solana liquid staking and JitoSOL ETF infrastructure to maximize yield and network efficiency.
• Wavebridge, delivering institutional-grade crypto prime brokerage and asset management solutions for traditional finance.
• Hanwha Asset Management, leading ETF issuer bridging the gap between traditional capital and innovative digital asset portfolios.
• FnGuide, South Korea's premier financial index provider, supplying the benchmark data necessary to structure transparent digital asset products. 
• KODA, the trusted institutional custodian backed by KB Kookmin Bank, providing secure, compliant enterprise-grade asset storage. 
• Solana Company (Nasdaq: HSDT), powering the ecosystem with high-performance institutional staking and validator infrastructure designed for massive scalability. 
• Shin & Kim, providing expert regulatory guidance to navigate South Korea's compliance landscape and ensure secure institutional adoption.  

The structure is deliberate. Index construction, issuance, custody, staking, and regulatory counsel are each represented by an established Korean or global institution, reflecting a multi-stakeholder, compliance-first approach to building digital asset products that can stand up to institutional and regulatory scrutiny.

Jito's Role

Jito Foundation brings domain expertise in liquid staking and JitoSOL, the largest liquid staking token on Solana. As Korean institutions evaluate staking-based yield within regulated investment products, Jito's infrastructure offers a proven model for how staking rewards can be integrated into institutional-grade financial vehicles. Jito's participation underscores the growing role of Solana-based infrastructure in the institutional products taking shape across Asia.

The joint research report will be released during Korea Blockchain Week. Further details on the report and the working group's roadmap will follow.