SMBC Nikko partners with Uniswap on Japan-compliant DeFi gateway targeted for mid-2027

One of Japan’s major securities firms wants to bring decentralized finance into the country’s regulated system. It plans to do that by building on Uniswap rather than fighting it. On October 2, 2026, SMBC Nikko Securities and Nethermind signed a memorandum of understanding with Uniswap Labs, Base and Nyx Foundation. The goal is a Japan-focused DeFi Gateway, with completion targeted for mid-2027. A memorandum of understanding is a statement of intent, not a launched product. Still, this is a traditional securities house formally aligning with a DeFi protocol, a regulator-friendly roadmap, and a Coinbase-linked blockchain. What the DeFi Gateway is supposed to do At its core, the project aims to create a liquidity-provisioning protocol with custom liquidity pools built to meet regulatory compliance requirements. The partners plan to address compliance with Uniswap v4 hooks. Hooks are plug-in pieces of code that attach to a pool and run custom logic around trades. In this case, the hooks are meant to embed anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-financing of terrorism (CFT) measures directly into the compliant pools. Investor protections would sit inside the system itself rather than b...