New products under FinTech Lab

AFSA invites all licensed Digital Asset Service Providers participating in FinTech Lab to pilot new categories of digital asset products and services. The following list offers examples and may be expanded to include more options, reflecting AFSA’s commitment to support ongoing innovation.

• Digital Asset Margin Trading: Participants may test services that allow users to borrow money to trade digital assets. These loans are typically secured by the user’s digital assets or other types of collateral, allowing users to trade with more capital than they actually own.

• Digital Asset Derivatives: Participants may test trading tools like options (a type of derivative contract that gives the buyer the right to buy or sell an underlying asset at a predetermined price before or on a specified expiration date), futures (standardised contracts to buy or sell an asset at a predetermined price on a specified future date), or contracts based on the price of digital assets. These products can help manage price risks or generate profit from price movements. In the sandbox, such products are available to professional clients only.

• Staking Services: Participants may test services that allow clients to lock their digital tokens for a set period of time to support a blockchain network. In return, clients receive rewards, which are then distributed among the clients.

• NFT Trading and Related Activities: Participants may test platforms where users buy, sell, or exchange unique digital items (Non–Fungible Tokens), such as digital art, music, collectibles and others.

• Digital Asset Loans: Participants may test platforms that offer loans in digital assets. These loans are secured by digital assets or other acceptable types of collateral. 

• Liquidity Mining / Yield Farming: Participants may test methods of investing clients’ digital assets into decentralised finance (DeFi) platforms to earn rewards. The rewards earned and profits are then distributed among the clients.

• Other Derivatives and Services (Peer-to-Peer, Derivatives, etc.): Participants may explore and test additional digital asset products and services, like peer-to-peer trading platforms, automated trading bots, or synthetic assets (financial instruments that mimic the value of real assets using smart contracts or derivatives, without requiring ownership of the actual asset). All these must follow the current AIFC regulations and AFSA’s risk management rules.

All products and services listed above have been approved for testing within the FinTech Lab under AFSA Notice No. AFSA-F-NB-2024-0005. These activities are permitted only within the sandbox environment and are subject to relevant conditions and limitations set forth in the Notice. 

For information on transitioning to full-scale operations outside the sandbox, please refer to: AFSA – Astana Financial Services Authority » Supervision