Alastria and Gateway join forces to advance an open-source institutional onchain layer in Europe

Europe’s next phase of onchain finance will be defined not only by what can move onchain, but by what institutions can move onchain with confidence.

Alastria and Gateway are collaborating to bring an open-source, privacy-preserving layer for institutional onchain finance to ISBE (Infraestructura de Servicios Blockchain de España). ISBE is Europe’s first public-permissioned blockchain network built with compliance-by-design architecture, developed and operated by Alastria. The collaboration connects Europe’s growing institutional onchain ecosystem with the controls and production capabilities required for regulated adoption.

The work begins with a privacy-focused pilot, designed to evaluate how controlled transaction visibility can be introduced into an institutionally governed network. It addresses one of the central barriers to institutional adoption.

Why institutions need privacy and control

Banks, enterprises and public institutions increasingly recognise what shared onchain infrastructure can offer across payments, treasury, tokenised assets, digital identity and public services. Yet much of that activity involves information that cannot be exposed across a shared network: client positions, payment flows, commercial terms and the activity of public bodies.

For institutions, privacy is not an optional feature. It is part of the operating architecture.

Shared infrastructure must allow each institution to determine what information is visible, to whom and under which conditions. It must give supervisors and auditors a defined view when they need one. And it must do this while preserving the integrity, governance and operability of the underlying network.

From experimentation to institutional execution

Europe is moving from fragmented blockchain experimentation toward more structured, regulation-aligned and institutionally governed infrastructure. Institutions are no longer asking whether assets and financial processes can be represented onchain. They are asking whether these environments can meet the privacy, governance, security and operational requirements of real economic activity.

Spain has a distinct role in that transition. Alastria connects a large public-private ecosystem of enterprises, public administrations, universities and technology providers. Through ISBE, it is developing interoperable infrastructure aligned with European initiatives and standards, designed from the outset for regulated and institutional use.

An open-source privacy-preserving layer for ISBE

Gateway brings the privacy-preserving layer, and the production perspective, needed to turn this direction into deployable institutional environments. The layer is designed to give institutions:

• Controlled visibility. Each participant sees only what policy allows, so institutions can share a network without exposing commercially sensitive activity to one another.
• Governed participation. Access is tied to verified identity and roles, and changes to permissions are reviewed, approved and recorded.
• Defined oversight. Supervisors and auditors can receive scoped, time-bound and logged access, rather than all-or-nothing visibility.
• Production readiness. It works with the standard EVM technology institutions already use, with the operational capabilities needed to move from validation to production.

Open source is central to the approach. Infrastructure that serves public and regulated institutions should be open to inspection. Institutions, network operators and supervisors can examine exactly what runs, deploy it in their own environments and rely on it without lock-in. An open-source layer on public-permissioned infrastructure means trust can rest on what can be verified, rather than on what a single vendor asserts.

The privacy pilot

The collaboration’s first technical initiative is a privacy-focused pilot within the Alastria environment. The pilot will examine how an open-source, privacy-preserving layer can support:

• controlled visibility of sensitive onchain activity;
• institutionally governed participation;
• confidential financial and commercial workflows;
• the open-source requirements of institutional deployment;
• a pathway from technical validation toward production readiness.

The objective goes beyond demonstrating privacy as an isolated technical capability. The pilot will evaluate whether privacy can be embedded in the operating model of institutionally governed infrastructure, so that regulated organisations can participate in shared environments without exposing information that must remain protected.

Looking ahead

The collaboration creates room for deeper technical, ecosystem and market collaboration as the work develops. Alastria and Gateway may explore further areas where privacy, control and production readiness are essential, including institutional payments, euro-denominated stablecoins, tokenised deposits, tokenised assets, corporate treasury, digital identity and public-sector applications.

These areas represent a longer-term direction, not announced deployments. Future initiatives will be communicated as use cases are defined and the pilot produces approved outcomes.

Miguel Angel Calero, Executive Director ISBE at Alastria:

“ISBE already runs as production infrastructure for the public and private organizations that operate within it. What motivates us to explore this with Gateway is a gap we see consistently across the institutions in the blockchain space: privacy preserving capability is something each of them still has to build or source on their own, at real cost and with real inconsistency between how different organizations handle it. That is not a sustainable position for institutions that are expected to interoperate with each other.”

Igor Mandrigin, co-founder and CTPO of Gateway:

“Europe is moving from blockchain experimentation toward institutional execution. That shift depends on infrastructure that gives banks, enterprises and public institutions control over how sensitive financial activity is seen, governed and operated. With ISBE, Alastria has built a public-permissioned foundation designed for compliance from the start. Bringing an open-source, privacy-preserving layer to it means institutions can share infrastructure without surrendering confidentiality or control, and can verify exactly how that protection works.”

Further details on scope, timeline, and participating institutions will follow as the collaboration progresses.

Building the institutional layer

Moving financial activity onchain will take more than tokenisation. It will take environments that institutions can govern, integrate and operate with confidence. For Europe, an open-source, privacy-preserving layer on compliance-by-design infrastructure is an important part of that foundation. The collaboration between Alastria and Gateway is a step toward building it.

The privacy-focused pilot is the starting point. Technical findings and collaboration milestones will be shared as the work develops.

About Alastria

Alastria is one of the largest public permissioned, multisector blockchain platforms in the world. Founded in Spain in 2017, the association brings together more than 500 members, including companies of all sizes, universities, research centres and public administrations, around a shared purpose: the responsible, trusted and regulation aligned adoption of decentralised technology. Alastria serves as a neutral meeting point for knowledge, innovation and blockchain development, takes part in European and international standardisation bodies, and develops and operates ISBE. alastria.io

About ISBE

ISBE is a public permissioned blockchain infrastructure, developed and operated by Alastria, that offers companies, SMEs and public administrations blockchain services that are compliant by design. It allows regulated organisations to adopt blockchain with the legal certainty, accountability and governance that institutional use requires, under European jurisdiction and with European nodes, infrastructure and operators. Its governance is shared by public and private agents. ISBE supports Europe’s technological sovereignty and makes it easier for organisations to move from experimentation to real use cases in areas such as evidence certification, trusted registries, digital identity, asset tokenisation and digital money. redisbe.com

About Gateway

Gateway is the institutional infrastructure orchestrator for sovereign onchain finance. It combines its platform, specialist partners and an integration team to help banks, market infrastructures and financial institutions bring regulated financial products onchain, under their own rules, brand and jurisdiction. Gateway’s Open Privacy Suite is open source under the Apache 2.0 licence. gateway.fm