South Korea's Meritz Securities has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Optimism Foundation on business in tokenised financial assets. The two sides will examine structures for issuance, settlement and distribution on OP Stack networks such as OP Mainnet. Meritz says it will act within the law and its licence, taking into account Korea's still-developing security token framework. The firm has equity of 8.35 trillion won and is also looking at spot ETFs and won stablecoins.

What it means: What is interesting about the agreement is that a traditional brokerage is considering a public Ethereum layer-two network, rather than a closed system, to distribute securities. That would mean digital securities could circulate on infrastructure already used by many applications and wallets, with lower connection costs. At the same time, the firm stresses investor protection and compliance, which shows the next steps depend on Korea's regulatory framework, still being shaped. Korea has become one of the most active markets for tokenisation, with several brokerages signing similar memoranda. It should be noted, however, that a memorandum is not a product: there is no issue, amount or date yet. In Europe, similar activity falls under MiFID II and the DLT pilot regime rather than MiCA, because these are financial instruments. For Greek investment firms, the development shows public blockchain technology is being taken seriously by supervised players, but practical use will come through regulated channels. The next real news will be a first issue.

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