Nomura's Laser Digital backs ZIGChain to build onchain private credit in the Gulf
The strategic investment, understood to be in the single-digit millions, pairs Laser's institutional risk framework with ZIGChain's pipeline of regional vault products.
Laser Digital, the digital-assets arm of Japan's Nomura Group, has made a strategic investment in ZIGChain, a UAE-based Layer 1 focused on wealth and investment applications. The amount was not disclosed, but it is understood to be in the single-digit millions.
The investment is also a partnership. Laser and ZIGChain plan to build a pipeline of institutional onchain vault products for private credit markets across the Gulf states, including Sharia-compliant offerings. The arrangement includes risk-framework design and governance, according to the companies' announcement as reported by CoinDesk.
A regional credit gap
ZIGChain co-founder Abdul Rafay Gadit said private credit in the Middle East has a two-sided access problem: borrowers outside traditional bank channels struggle to raise money, while investors may not know where the opportunities are or can reach them only through large funds with high fees.
ZIGChain's own documentation describes the network as a permissionless Layer 1 for wealth applications. Its Wealth Management Engine is designed to let builders and managers create investment strategies onchain, while the chain supplies the settlement and governance layer underneath.
Laser brings the institutional filter
The partnership gives the project a financial-services counterweight as it tries to turn tokenized credit into products institutions can actually hold. Laser Digital chief executive Jez Mohideen said “execution risk has been consistently underestimated” in onchain finance and that the firm's role is to apply the risk standards it uses across its broader offerings.
That emphasis reflects a more cautious phase for Nomura's crypto strategy. The bank tightened risk limits at Laser Digital earlier this year after crypto losses weighed on quarterly profit, while signaling that it would remain in the sector with a more conservative approach. The ZIGChain deal is consistent with that posture: a targeted investment tied to governance and product controls rather than a broad market expansion.
The proof will be in the vaults
The first meaningful milestones are not the investment amount or the blockchain label. They are the vaults that reach production, the assets and borrowers they underwrite, the rules governing redemptions and the data institutions receive about risk. Private credit products need clear loss allocation and liquidity terms even when the settlement rail is onchain.
If ZIGChain and Laser can turn their regional network into products with those controls, the partnership could give tokenized credit a route into Gulf capital markets. If the pipeline remains a collection of pilots, the investment will show interest in the category without proving that blockchain changes the economics of private lending.
