VARA Grants Licence to Backpack to Launch Backpack Exchange

Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), which supervises and regulates all virtual asset activities across the Emirate, has issued licence to operate in Dubai to Backpack, the all-in-one web3 wallet and company behind Mad Lads, the No. 1 Non-Fungible Token collection by market cap on Solana.

Trek Labs Ltd FZE will launch Backpack Exchange, and this license issued only covers Backpack Exchange and not any of the other virtual asset products and services offered by Backpack.

Over the past five months, Backpack Exchange has developed a next-generation exchange that incorporates a novel zero-knowledge proof of reserves (zk-proofs), Multi-Party Computation (MPC) for custody, and low latency order execution, while also securing licenses in several jurisdictions worldwide and establishing premium fiat on and off ramps for users.

The combination of Backpack Exchange and Backpack Wallet (which is currently an unregulated product) is designed to provide the smoothest transition for users from fiat to on-chain applications. While Backpack Wallet users already have access to a variety of dApps and executable NFTs (xNFTs) unique to Backpack, they will now be able to conduct trades on the exchange directly in the app.

VARA’s VASP license for Exchange Services allows crypto businesses to exchange virtual assets for all types of customers. As the world’s first independent regulator for virtual assets, VARA serves as a transparent and trusted guiding authority for the emerging world of virtual assets. In early 2023, VARA released the world’s first, tailor-made regime for regulating virtual assets.

Time for Transparency

Armani Ferrante, CEO and Founder of Backpack, said that time has come to put an end to the days of opaque crypto exchanges representing everything the industry stood against.

“It shouldn’t be normal to use an exchange with a single point of failure, without proof of reserves, or without auditability. A verifiable, unforgeable ledger is the exact problem blockchains solve, and Backpack Exchange is taking full advantage of that. Using cryptographic techniques like zk-proofs, MPC, and state machine replication, Backpack Exchange hopes to raise the bar for transparency and compliance to demonstrate the best this technology has to offer,” Ferrante added.

Backpack Exchange will launch in private beta for existing Backpack and Mad Lads community members this November. The beta will feature spot crypto trading functionality. The exchange is set to go live to the public in Q1 of 2024.

The Backpack Exchange team will be working to add in various trading functionalities such as derivatives, margin, cross-collateral while its compliance team with decades of experience from Barclays, State Street, HSBC, Coinbase, and other prominent financial institutions continue to secure additional licenses around the world.

About Backpack

Backpack is an all-in-one web3 app that functions as a noncustodial wallet, allowing users to download and interact with xNFTs, a popular NFT standard that tokenizes applications. For additional information on Backpack.