Altus Formalizes ‘Institutional Blockchain Foundry’ Push for Financial Firms

Altus, a South Korean blockchain company formerly known as Behavest, is formalizing a business focused on helping financial institutions build and operate blockchain services. Drawing on expertise accumulated over the past eight years, the company aims to position itself as a digital-asset infrastructure partner for financial firms.

Altus said June 18 that it is formalizing its business identity to target domestic institutional demand for blockchain adoption. It described that identity as an “institutional blockchain foundry.”

The company is highlighting that positioning because it views blockchain’s core role as improving existing financial services. “If institutions want to advance financial infrastructure through blockchain, a partner that only understands technology is not enough,” Altus Chief Executive Officer Lee Hyung-yeon said. They need a technology partner that understands both blockchain and the broader context of the financial industry, while also bringing global market experience that has been translated into real-world systems, he said.

Blockchain adoption, however, has yet to move from proof-of-concept projects into live services in many cases. While demand from financial institutions is rising, commercialization requires both core technical capabilities and a deep understanding of the financial industry. It also requires experience in designing, building and operating digital-asset financial products tied to real-world assets, stablecoin payments and on-chain trading.

Eight Years of Finance and Blockchain Experience

For financial institutions, blockchain projects are not simply about adopting a new technology. Altus said institutional adoption involves complex decisions shaped by client assets, transaction stability and regulatory compliance. The challenge is that systems that work in test environments often differ from those that can operate in live markets.

Altus says its accumulated technical capabilities position it to meet rising institutional demand. Founded in 2018, the company has spent about eight years conducting research and development in core blockchain technology and financial infrastructure. It said its experience implementing and operating blockchain-based financial functions, including mainnets, payments, tokenization and trading, can serve as the foundation for institutional clients seeking to commercialize services.

Track Record in Turnkey Public Mainnet Builds

Altus said its key competitive strength lies in the expertise it has built over eight years. The company has handled four public mainnet projects on a turnkey basis, from design through operations, including Stable, AULT and Canto. Based on that track record, it said it aims to become a long-term partner supporting institutions from the design stage of blockchain projects through infrastructure construction, operations and upgrades.

“In traditional finance, technology has largely been a tool for improving operational efficiency,” Lee said. In blockchain, business needs are more deeply linked to the technology’s potential, he said, adding that without a detailed understanding of the synergies between blockchain and existing financial services, it is difficult to design practical solutions.

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

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

Pursuing Long-Term Technology Partnerships

Altus said institutional digital-asset businesses need to pursue integrated services. Functions tied to digital assets — from token issuance and investor management to trading, collateral, payments, settlement and redemption — may appear separate, but in live service environments they must work as a consistent flow. The company said its experience operating not only mainnets but also blockchain-based financial services such as payments, tokenization and trading supports the design of such integrated services.

“When institutions adopt blockchain, they need more than infrastructure development,” an Altus official said. They also need an understanding of business objectives, workflow design, and regulatory and operational risks. Altus’s experience across both digital-asset infrastructure and financial products allows it to design and implement each function as part of a single flow, the official said.

The company also identified the FDE, or Forward Deployed Engineering, model as a key strength. FDE is a form of embedded engineering in which the company participates from the design stage, when business goals and direction are set, and supports partners through system construction, operations and feature expansion. Altus said that differs from outsourced development that ends once a system is delivered to a client. Its approach is to take long-term responsibility for projects from design to operations and upgrades.

Altus said it adopted the FDE model because, in blockchain infrastructure, agile responses to shifts in global financial markets — including security measures and protocol upgrades — matter more than initial construction alone. “Technology systems need to be designed around sophisticated business logic and objectives, and they need to keep evolving,” Lee said. That requires long-term, close cooperation with clients, he said.

The FDE model also gives partner companies a way to build their own blockchain technology and business expertise. Rather than relying on one-off outsourced development to solve problems in existing services, the structure is designed to jointly plan future improvements. Altus said that is one reason it is emphasizing long-term partnerships.

More than half of Altus’s roughly 40 employees are senior-level engineers, the company said. Its workforce includes people from Kakao, Samsung Electronics, KB Kookmin Bank, Deutsche Bank and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute. Altus said that reflects a business model specialized in financial blockchain infrastructure.

Lee, who leads Altus, studied mathematics at POSTECH and earned a master’s degree in finance from the University of Reading before working at South Korean financial institutions including Meritz Securities. He said he has focused on bringing together talent from finance and blockchain into a single team. The company has also built a culture that emphasizes logical thinking and client communication skills as it grows into an organization optimized for FDE, he said.