Highlights
- Havenex, a regulated digital asset platform tied to Sui co-founder Kostas Chalkias, is nearing the close of a Series A round.
- The company has applied for the licenses required to launch, and is pursuing authorisation from Austria's Financial Market Authority.
- Havenex plans to offer institutional custody, trading, brokerage, and yield-generating products to banks, fintechs, and asset managers.
- Its supervisory board includes Mysten Labs co-founders Kostas Chalkias and Adeniyi Abiodun alongside Petros Pyloridis.
- The launch adds to a wave of institutional-grade crypto infrastructure aimed at banks that still can't touch digital assets directly.
A new institutional crypto exchange with direct ties to the team behind the Sui blockchain is closing in on its first major funding round. Wu Blockchain reported that Kostas Kryptos Chalkias, a co-founder of Mysten Labs, has unveiled Havenex, a regulated exchange that is currently raising a Series A round nearing completion. According to the report, Havenex has already applied for the licenses required for its planned operations.
An Austrian License, Not a Sui-Native Play
Havenex's own site confirms the regulatory push: the company describes itself as being in the authorisation process with Austria's Financial Market Authority, and states plainly that it does not yet provide regulated services while that process is underway. That distinguishes Havenex from many exchange launches tied to a specific blockchain founder — despite Chalkias's role building Sui, Havenex is not positioned as a Sui-only venue. It's built as chain-agnostic infrastructure aimed at giving banks, fintechs, and asset managers regulated access to digital asset markets without having to build custody, trading, and brokerage systems themselves.
Who's Behind It
Havenex's supervisory board pairs Chalkias with fellow Mysten Labs co-founder Adeniyi Abiodun and Petros Pyloridis, while Gregorios Siourounis leads the management board. Chalkias holds a PhD in identity-based cryptography and previously led cryptography work on Meta's Libra project and on WhatsApp security before co-founding Mysten Labs, giving the venture a technical pedigree that's likely to matter as it courts institutional clients wary of custody security. The planned product suite — cold and warm storage custody, institutional trading, brokerage, and yield products like margin and lending — targets exactly the segment of finance that has been slowest to move on-chain: regulated banks and asset managers that need a licensed counterparty rather than a retail-facing exchange.
Part of a Broader Institutional Push
Havenex's timing lines up with a broader trend of infrastructure providers racing to give traditional finance a compliant on-ramp to crypto markets, a theme that shows up as well in exchanges like Hyperliquid expanding their own smart contract and lending infrastructure. Where Hyperliquid is building for crypto-native DeFi users, Havenex is explicitly targeting the opposite end of the market — institutions that need MiFID-style regulatory cover before they'll touch digital assets at all.
Related: Hyperliquid Tests Manual Borrowing, Opens HyperCore to Smart Contracts
What to Watch Next
Two milestones will determine whether Havenex moves from pitch deck to live platform: the close of its Series A round, which Wu Blockchain's report suggests is imminent, and the outcome of its Austrian FMA authorisation, which will determine when — or whether — it can begin onboarding the institutional clients its product roadmap is built around.
