Waves CEO sells all his stake in blockchain project Vostok; GHP Group now the sole owner

The founder of token issuance platform Waves has completely sold all his stake in the firm’s blockchain spin-off Vostok to concentrate on the Waves platform.

As per a press release on Tuesday, Alexander Ivanov fully sold his Vostok stake, making GHP Financial Group the sole owner of the project. Ivanov said he decided to sell the project to focus resources on the Web3 ecosystem development on the Waves Platform.

“For me, the priority was and remains the international development of the Waves Platform to create the next generation of the Internet with smart, decentralised services running on the blockchain. Therefore, I have decided to sell the Vostok project…,” Ivanov said.

Launched in April 2018, the Vostok project is a private blockchain platform that is composed of the global Vostok blockchain platform and the Vostok system integrator for enterprise and government IT systems. In late 2018, Waves secured $120 million to launch Vostok and was seeking another $120 million this year for the project.

Marker Garber, GHP Group Board Chairman and one of Vostok project’s early investors, said the current progress of the project will help GHP Group increase its technological expertise level.

The new deal will also enable GHP Group, which specializes in wealth management, direct investment, and financial advisory services, to integrate distributed ledger technologies into their resources, production, logistics assets, and partner projects.

Being a notable blockchain project in Russia, Vostok has entered into several deals with different private and public Russian companies including the country’s biggest bank Sberbank, government-backed Vnesheconombank, Transmanshholding, VEB.RF, Rostec, and the Nizhny Novgorod region.

Garber also said that the group plans to continue developing the project and retain both the management and platform development teams. On the other hand, Ivanov hinted in a tweet that new expansion roadmap will be introduced this week.

The sale announcement came after Waves announced last month that the Vostok platform is now live and can enable partners and clients to build their own nodes of the main network and private subnets. All features of the network can be used, while data are being stored exclusively in their own IT systems.