Bitcoin Magazine

Kraken Parent Company Payward to Buy Saldo Bank in European Banking Push

Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Saldo Bank, gaining an EU banking license and a footprint across five European markets.

Payward is buying Saldo Finance Oy, a Finnish holding company whose subsidiary, Saldo Bank UAB, is a digital-first specialized bank licensed in Lithuania. The bank operates in Lithuania, Finland, Sweden and Germany, with a passport into the Netherlands. 

Payward did not reveal the financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close in 2027, subject to regulatory approvals.

It comes as Kraken, like other crypto exchanges, pushes further into the traditional finance world, allowing users to trade stocks, bonds and other assets. The company has sold its app as a “primary account for everything.”

“A regulated EU bank is the piece that lets us serve European clients the way a primary financial institution should: one place to hold assets, move them freely, and put them to work,” said Arjun Sethi, Payward’s co-CEO. “We are starting in the EU, and the ambition is global.”

Payward said that once completed, the acquisition is expected to let Payward Banking offer interest on deposits, SME and consumer loans, credit cards, and banking-as-a-service tools such as card issuance, SEPA payments access and embedded lending for partners. 

Saldo already offers retail term deposits in all four of its operating markets, consumer lending in Lithuania, Finland and Sweden, and a credit card in Finland.

Payward says it already holds a Federal Reserve limited-purpose master account in the U.S. and an e-money license from the Central Bank of Ireland, and has originated more than $2 billion in loans.

The deal comes shortly after Payward this week announced plans to launch in the UAE following full approval from Dubai’s Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority. 

In September, Bloomberg reported  that Nasdaq Inc. was investing $100 million in Payward at a $21 billion valuation, citing people familiar with the matter. Payward and SoFi Technologies also recently agreed to route SoFi customers’ crypto orders through Kraken Prime, Kraken’s prime brokerage arm.

This post Kraken Parent Company Payward to Buy Saldo Bank in European Banking Push first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

TL;DR

• Lido DAO Vote #214 has passed with 58.2 million LDO participating in favor.
• The vote implements Dual Governance V1 parameters, giving stETH holders a new mechanism to contest certain governance actions.
• The associated emergency governance delay has been extended to 14 days.

Lido’s long-running effort to give stETH holders more influence over protocol governance has moved another step forward.

Onchain Vote #214 has passed, implementing parameters associated with Lido’s Dual Governance system on Ethereum mainnet.

The vote received support from 58.2 million LDO participating tokens.

Dual Governance Creates A Second Check On LDO Holders

Traditional DAO governance gives voting power to holders of the governance token.

For Lido, that means LDO.

The complication is that the people economically exposed to the staking protocol are not necessarily the same people holding large amounts of LDO.

stETH holders may have substantial value inside Lido while having little direct ability to stop governance decisions that affect the protocol.

Dual Governance is designed to narrow that gap.

The framework gives stETH holders a mechanism to contest or delay certain governance actions before they are executed.

That does not replace LDO voting.

It creates an additional check around it.

The idea is particularly important for a liquid staking protocol because governance controls smart contracts handling very large amounts of user-deposited ETH.

The Delay Window Is Part Of The Security Model

Vote #214 also extends the relevant emergency governance delay window to 14 days.

A longer delay gives stakeholders more time to respond when an action is disputed.

That can make governance slower.

It can also make a hostile or controversial change harder to rush through before affected users have time to react.

Lido has been developing Dual Governance as a way to reduce one of the structural risks around decentralized protocols: governance-token holders making decisions that may not align with the interests of users whose assets sit inside the system.

The latest vote does not make Lido governance perfectly decentralized or remove every governance risk.

It does change the balance.

LDO remains the governance token, but stETH holders now have a more meaningful role in the safety architecture around major decisions.

For a protocol whose main product represents staked ETH, that is a significant shift in who gets a voice when governance and user capital collide.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

TL;DR

• Lido DAO has executed onchain Vote #206, updating parts of its staking-router and node-operator configuration.
• The vote is distinct from Vote #205 covered in the previous batch.
• The changes are operational and do not alter stETH withdrawal mechanics.

Lido DAO has completed another onchain governance action, executing Vote #206 only a short time after the protocol’s previous operational upgrade package.

The new vote focuses on staking-router and node-operator parameters rather than changing the core economics of stETH.

Governance Work Continues Behind The Staking Product

Lido is often experienced by users as a simple product: deposit ETH and receive stETH.

Behind that interface sits a much more complicated operating system for allocating validators, managing node operators and controlling how staking capacity is distributed.

Vote #206 adjusts parts of that machinery.

The validated governance notes indicate changes around validator assignment keys and staking-router parameters, giving the DAO another opportunity to refine how work is distributed across operators.

For a protocol responsible for a large amount of staked ETH, small operational controls can carry meaningful consequences.

This Is Not Another Withdrawal Upgrade

It is important not to overstate the vote.

Vote #206 does not redesign stETH withdrawals or introduce a new staking token.

It is closer to maintenance and operational governance.

That may sound less exciting, but mature DeFi infrastructure increasingly depends on exactly this type of work.

A staking protocol needs clear controls over who can operate validators, how capacity is allocated and how permissions change over time.

Lido’s governance process is gradually formalizing those responsibilities through repeated onchain votes.

The fact that Vote #206 follows Vote #205 so quickly also shows how active the DAO’s operational calendar has become.

For users, there is no special action required.

For delegates and node operators, the executed parameters become part of the system they now need to work under.

Repeated governance votes can look mundane from the outside, but they are also how a large staking protocol avoids concentrating too much operational discretion in a small team. Each parameter change leaves a public record of what the DAO approved and when it became active. That transparency becomes more valuable as Lido’s share of Ethereum staking remains systemically important. The protocol’s challenge is to keep governance responsive without turning routine maintenance into an endless coordination bottleneck. Vote #206 is another small example of that balance being tested in production.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.