China Merchants Bank International (CMBI) is partnering with Nervos Network — a Chinese blockchain startup founded by a former researcher and developer of the Ethereum Foundation.

A press release published on Oct. 3 revealed that the new partnership will focus on jointly developing decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and helping Nervos to grow its network in the financial services industry.

A shift toward decentralization in finance

Nervos Network develops a suite of protocols and public blockchain ecosystem aimed at achieving the security, immutability and permissionless possibilities exemplified by the Bitcoin (BTC) network alongside smart contract functionality, Layer-2 scaling support and token economics.

Nervos’ Common knowledge base (CKB) is its Layer-1, proof-of-work public and permissionless protocol that will be used as the native architecture for the DeFi applications to be developed with CMBI.

Commenting on the new cooperation, Nervos Network co-founder Kevin Wang claimed:

"The recent wave of high-profile blockchain projects such as Libra and JPM Coin foreshadows a shift in the financial services industry [...] our partnership with CMBI will play an important role in modelling the future of decentralized finance and accelerating mainstream blockchain adoption."

DeFi-focused partnerships

The press release reveals that CMBI’s fund made a strategic investment in Nervos as part of the $28 million it raised in July 2018 to help develop its enterprise blockchain solutions.

The funds were raised from a number of high-profile blockchain investors, including crypto hedge fund Polychain Capital and venture capital firm Sequoia China.

CMBI will also reportedly participate in Nervos’ public token sale for the CKB protocol’s native token CKByte on Oct. 16 via CoinList.

In July 2019, Nervos partnered with major cryptocurrency exchange operator Huobi Group to jointly develop a new public blockchain for DeFi services — Huobi Finance Chain.