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The Laser Digital ZIGChain UAE partnership pairs a strategic stake with a structuring and risk-oversight role for a UAE-based onchain private credit push, the companies announced August 5, 2026. The investment is in the high single-digit millions of dollars, and the two companies are targeting a minimum of $100 million in total value locked across their onchain credit vaults, $25 million by September and the full $100 million by the end of November 2026.
What Laser Digital is actually doing
Laser Digital’s role goes beyond writing a cheque. The Nomura subsidiary is structuring and overseeing risk for a pipeline of ZIGChain’s onchain private credit products, spanning private credit, SME financing, invoice factoring and stablecoin infrastructure. That distinction matters: Laser Digital is putting its own institutional risk management on the products themselves, not just backing ZIGChain as a passive investor.
Dr Jez Mohideen, CEO of Laser Digital, said: “The shared vision remains to make the next generation of asset management products accessible.”
Abdul Rafay Gadit, co-founder of ZIGChain, said: “Laser is creating with us one of the largest on-chain products the Gulf countries have ever seen.”
Who’s behind each side of the deal?
Laser Digital is Nomura’s digital asset arm, launched in 2022 and headquartered in Switzerland, with an existing UAE presence. It secured in-principle approval from Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority in September 2023 to provide broker-dealer and asset/fund management services covering both virtual and traditional assets, meaning this ZIGChain deal builds on roughly three years of UAE regulatory groundwork rather than a fresh market entry.
ZIGChain is a Layer 1 blockchain founded by a Karachi-based team led by Abdul Rafay Gadit, built around Shariah-compliant infrastructure for tokenised real-world assets. It already has an existing tokenised-fund alliance with Apex Group, a crypto-friendly fund administrator, dating to July 2025, and runs Zamanat, described as the first Shariah-compliant real-world asset tokenisation platform built to avoid interest-bearing structures under Islamic finance principles.
Why onchain private credit, and why now
The pitch behind onchain private credit is a two-sided access problem: borrowers who can’t get traditional bank financing on one side, and capital holders who don’t know these opportunities exist on the other, all while cutting the fees and entry barriers of large institutional private credit funds. Both companies have offices in Dubai, roughly a kilometre apart, which the companies pointed to as part of what made the partnership come together.
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Why it matters
For the UAE’s tokenised finance sector
A major bank’s digital asset arm structuring risk on an onchain credit product, rather than just investing in a token, is a different kind of institutional validation than a funding round. If Laser Digital’s risk oversight holds up in practice, it’s a template other institutions weighing onchain private credit in the Gulf will watch closely.
For borrowers and capital holders
The $100 million target is a real, dated milestone, not an open-ended ambition. Whether ZIGChain’s vaults actually reach underserved borrowers, rather than simply digitising credit for borrowers who already have bank access, is the specific claim worth checking once the vaults are live rather than taking on faith now.
What’s next
The immediate marker to watch is the $25 million total value locked target for September 2026, a five-week-out checkpoint from the announcement. Neither company has named specific borrowers, disclosed underwriting standards for the vaults, or said how Shariah compliance will be verified at scale as the credit pipeline grows.
FAQs
What is onchain private credit?
Private lending where the loan terms, funding and repayment are recorded and managed on a blockchain rather than through a traditional bank or fund structure, intended to cut fees and access barriers versus conventional private credit funds.
What is a Layer 1 blockchain?
A blockchain’s base network, like Ethereum or Solana, that processes and settles transactions directly, as opposed to a Layer 2 network built on top of an existing base chain.
What does ‘total value locked’ mean?
The total value of assets deposited into a blockchain protocol’s products, in this case ZIGChain’s credit vaults, used as a measure of how much capital a protocol is actually managing.
What is Laser Digital?
Nomura’s digital asset arm, launched in 2022 and headquartered in Switzerland, covering secondary trading, venture capital and institutional investor products in digital assets.
Is ZIGChain’s platform Shariah-compliant?
Yes. ZIGChain runs Zamanat, a real-world asset tokenisation platform built with native tools intended to help avoid interest-bearing structures and excessive uncertainty, both requirements under Islamic finance principles.
Editor’s Take: Laser Digital taking a structuring and risk role, not just an investment, is also a real distinction worth crediting: that’s Nomura’s institutional machinery actually touching the product, not just its balance sheet backing it from a distance.
What’s still open is the underwriting itself. Neither company has said who the actual borrowers are or how credit risk gets assessed once real capital is moving through the vaults. That’s the detail worth watching for once the September checkpoint arrives, not the funding announcement itself.