On Oct. 26, S&P Global closed its acquisition of OpenZeppelin.
S&P Global said the smart-contract security firm’s open-source code supports more than $38 trillion in value transferred.
The deal closed under six weeks after being announced on Sept. 17. S&P Global estimated the figure at over $37 trillion at the time.
Security reviews discovered 10,000+ vulnerabilities before production
OpenZeppelin, founded in 2015, is a blockchain code auditor and maintainer of OpenZeppelin Contracts.
S&P Global (NYSE: SPGI) stated that OpenZeppelin’s security team has completed over 900 engagements for protocols and institutions. The reviews detected more than 10,000 vulnerabilities before the code went into production.
The press release depicts OpenZeppelin as the “security standard for onchain finance.” Its Contracts library backs many of the biggest stablecoins and tokenized funds, the statement said.
S&P Global didn’t say how much it paid to acquire OpenZeppelin.
S&P Global said it doesn’t expect the deal to make a material difference to its financial results.
S&P Global received advice from Clifford Chance and Jefferies LLC, while OpenZeppelin received it from FT Partners and Cooley.
The founder of OpenZeppelin, Demian Brener, still operates the company, which keeps its name as a standalone unit. He reports to Yann Le Pallec, head of S&P Global Ratings.
“Today OpenZeppelin begins its next chapter as part of S&P Global,” Brener said. He added that OpenZeppelin Contracts “remain open source, free and publicly maintained.”
S&P Global takes its risk checks on-chain
“Completing this acquisition is an important step for our digital assets strategy,” said Le Pallec.
After making the purchase, S&P Global said it would be able to do more risk assessments on the technology layer of on-chain financial products. In exchange, OpenZeppelin gets the backing of S&P Global’s brand, relationships with institutions and distribution around the world.
“As more of the financial system moves onchain, market participants need a clear view of the technology risk that sits beneath the assets they hold,” said Le Pallec. He added that OpenZeppelin’s expertise “is already foundational to that infrastructure.”
In September, the month it announced the OpenZeppelin deal, S&P Global led Kaiko‘s $110 million Series B round of funding. Kaiko is a crypto data provider.
Nasdaq Ventures, BNP Paribas and Coinbase Ventures all took part in the round. Kaiko was set up in 2014.
When the OpenZeppelin deal was made public in September, S&P Global’s stock was up about 1% before the market opened.
S&P Global stock SPGI closed trading on Monday at $450.65. The stock stayed almost flat for the day, according to Google Finance.
OpenZeppelin will assist S&P Global in developing the next generation of on-chain security assessments and benchmarks, S&P Global said.
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