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We're building it. Multilateral netting across counterparties. Securitised protection — not mutualized default funds. Filing for DCO registration. Capital relief at scale.
No auto-deleveraging. No mutualized default fund. Guaranteed contract performance through a regulated CCP. Real-time settlement. 40–60% margin reduction.
The bilateral derivatives market has no clearing solution. Counterparties post hundreds of billions in margin with no netting, no compression, and no capital relief. Risk weights on uncleared exposures run 20–150% under Basel III — versus 2% through a qualified CCP.
Existing clearing houses were built for standardized products. They cannot clear the complex bilateral trades the market actually needs cleared. Without a trusted intermediary, every trade is a direct counterparty risk.
The same gap exists in crypto — a $66.9 trillion annual market with no regulated CCP and auto-deleveraging that forces winners to absorb others' losses. DCN addresses both markets with one model.
A $66.9 trillion annual crypto derivatives market — 87% dominated by a single exchange. Auto-Deleveraging (ADL) forces profitable participants to absorb others' losses. No regulated CCP exists for institutional crypto derivatives.
The bilateral OTC market has the same gap — $460 billion in uncleared derivatives with no netting and no capital relief. DCN addresses both markets with one model.
DCN clears complex bilateral derivatives — OTC swaps, options, and structured products — alongside crypto derivatives, on a single platform. The core principle: no mutualization. No uninvolved party ever absorbs another's losses. The structural innovation is securitised tail-risk protection — tranched notes replacing the mutualized default fund — combined with risk decomposition that breaks complex trades into clearable components and tokenized collateral for real-time settlement.
No other player combines all three.
Bolts onto existing bank systems. No greenfield replacement required.
Complex bilateral trades are broken into standardized, independently clearable components.
Trades novate to DCN as central counterparty. Multilateral netting replaces siloed bilateral exposure.
Tokenized collateral enables real-time transfers. Counterparties borrow at lower cost instead of posting margin as capital.
Real-time (T+0) settlement. Collateral moves when needed, not in batch windows.
29% from MPOR compression alone (mathematical certainty). Multilateral netting delivers the rest. ~$20M savings per bank demonstrated in test trade.
Securitised protection replaces pooled default contributions. No uninvolved party absorbs another's losses. No auto-deleveraging.
Portfolio compression across multiple counterparties — a first for bilateral markets.
T+0 through tokenized collateral. No more T+2 batch processing.
Securitization lets banks borrow instead of posting initial margin as capital. Participants earn yield on protection tranches instead of zero return on default fund contributions.
DCO registration unlocks QCCP status under Basel III. Trade exposures drop from 20–150% bilateral risk weight to 2%. Over 90% SA-CCR capital reduction on cleared exposures.
DCN is designed from inception for QCCP status — the Basel III designation that makes clearing economically compelling for bank capital committees.
What most new entrants offer
Most new derivatives clearing entrants stop at DCO registration. Without QCCP status, bank capital committees cannot justify participation — the economics simply don't work. DCN's architecture satisfies all 24 PFMI principles and 18 CFTC Core Principles from inception. This is not a future aspiration; it is the central design constraint.
| Capability | Legacy CCPs Standardized products | DCN Bilateral market |
|---|---|---|
| Clear standardized/listed derivatives | ✓ | ✓ |
| Clear complex bilateral OTC derivatives | ✗ | ✓ |
| Risk decomposition for non-standard trades | ✗ | ✓ |
| Multilateral netting across bilateral positions | ✗ | ✓ |
| No mutualized default fund / no ADL | ✗ | ✓ |
| Tokenized collateral support | ✗ | ✓ |
| Real-time settlement (T+0) | ✗ | ✓ |
| Securitization-backed margin structures | ✗ | ✓ |
| Unified TradFi + crypto clearing | ✗ | ✓ |
| Bolt-on integration (no greenfield) | N/A | ✓ |
Legacy clearing infrastructure evolved over 40 years. It was designed for standardized products and cannot be retrofitted for the ~$460B bilateral market. Clearing fees: DCN at 0.5 bps vs 3–6 bps effective at incumbent crypto exchanges.
Move bilateral swap books to central clearing — 50–60% margin reduction with multilateral netting. QCCP status delivers 2% risk weight on cleared exposures.
Clear crypto options and futures through a regulated CCP. Guaranteed contract performance — no auto-deleveraging, no mutualized default fund. 40–60% margin reduction vs bilateral.
Compress overlapping positions across counterparties through multilateral netting.
Cheaper, faster derivatives settlement through existing bank relationships.
Replace posted initial margin with securitized borrowing at lower cost.
Earn yield on securitised protection tranches (SOFR + 200–400bps junior, SOFR + 30–100bps senior) instead of zero return on traditional default fund contributions.
Founders
Co-Founder & Co-CEO
Built clearing infrastructure at Eurex Clearing. Holds US patent for Constant Maturity Futures — predating BitMEX perps. Cantor/BGC, Trayport. MSc Physics, Imperial College.
Co-Founder & General Counsel
Wrote the ISDA Credit Support Annex — the legal framework governing collateral for derivatives globally. 12 years at Barclays as Legal Director. Prior CFTC DCO filing experience.
Co-Founder & CCO
ENT Technologies. European institutional investor and digital asset network. Drives commercial execution, investor relations, and institutional outreach from Zurich.
Co-Founder & CIO
AshSwap, 7K DeFi. Leads an engineering team shipping together since 2021. Built production AMMs, perpetual futures, and liquidation engines at scale.
Key Team
Head of Bank Sales
Credit Suisse 25+ years. Former MD, Deputy Head Counterparty Portfolio Management. XVA trading and structured credit.
Chief Risk Officer
Founding employee at Algorithmics — the risk analytics platform existing clearinghouses use. Former SVP, IHS Markit (now S&P Global).
Head of Sales
Built the international clearing model at Moscow Exchange to CME/Eurex standards. Was onboarding BofA, MUFG, ICBC, Standard Chartered, Citi.
Advisors
Advisor
Former CFTC Chairman. Architect of US derivatives regulation.
Advisor
Former CFO Credit Suisse, Former Group Treasurer Deutsche Bank, ISDA Board (2017).
Independent Director
Liffe, Eurex, Tokenovate, Chief Innovation Officer DBAG. Credited with moving the Bund. Regulatory and compliance governance.
DCN is a Derivatives Clearing Network — a next-generation derivatives clearing organization (DCO) building institutional-grade clearing infrastructure for both TradFi and crypto derivatives. One clearing model, two markets: full novation CCP for crypto/ETD, and risk-only clearing for bilateral OTC swaps.
Settlement is the transfer of assets after a trade. Clearing is the risk management step in between: the CCP becomes the counterparty to both sides, calculates margin, manages defaults, and enables netting. Even senior fund managers confuse the two — they are fundamentally different functions.
For standardized, listed products — yes. But $460B in bilateral OTC derivatives has no clearing solution at all. Clearing rates have stagnated or declined for 2–3 years. Vanilla swaps are cleared at LCH and Eurex; everything else — non-standard tenors, cross-currency basis, FX products, structured rates — remains entirely bilateral. In crypto, 87% of options volume runs through a single Panama-domiciled exchange with auto-deleveraging. There is no regulated CCP for institutional crypto derivatives.
Existing CCPs (CME, ICE, LCH) were built for standardized, listed products. Bilateral OTC derivatives — the $460B uncleared market — are too complex and varied for their models. Regulatory processes to approve new product types take 2–3 years per product. DCN's risk-decomposition approach solves this by breaking complex trades into standardized clearable components.
Incumbents have had decades and haven't. Their equity is owned by the FCMs they would compete with — a structural impossibility, not a lack of effort. Technology adaptation timelines at traditional CCPs run 3–5+ years, and their regulatory product approval processes create an uncloseable gap for at least 18–36 months. Network effects in clearing are winner-take-all: CME has held futures clearing dominance for 50+ years; LCH controls 97% of FX derivatives clearing.
DCN decomposes complex bilateral trades into standardized component pieces. Each piece is independently clearable through the CCP model. This enables clearing of trades that no existing clearing house can handle.
Auto-deleveraging (ADL) forces profitable participants to absorb other participants' losses during stress events. It is the default risk management mechanism at most crypto derivatives exchanges. Every institutional market maker in crypto knows the ADL problem — it makes risk management impossible at scale. DCN eliminates ADL entirely: tail risk is absorbed by securitised protection tranches, not by other participants.
Tokenized collateral represents traditional assets (securities, cash equivalents) in digital token form, enabling real-time transfer and settlement. Real-time clearing gives tokenized assets purpose.
50–60% total IM reduction compared to current bilateral positions. 29% comes from MPOR compression alone — cleared exposures use a 5-day close-out versus 10-day bilateral, a mathematical certainty under Basel rules. Multilateral netting delivers the rest. A test securitization trade demonstrated approximately $20M in savings for a single bank. Aggregate potential: ~$200B.
DCN is filing for CFTC-registered DCO status, led by Milbank LLP — the firm that has done the last several US DCO registrations. The team includes a co-founder with prior DCO filing experience and is advised by former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo. The DCO application is targeted for Q4 2026, with authorization expected around mid-2027.
Initially: crypto options/futures and OTC FX swaps. With full DCO authorization: bilateral OTC derivatives broadly, including interest rate swaps, credit, FX, and cross-asset portfolios. ETD (exchange-traded derivatives) from approximately Q1 2028.
DCN is designed to bolt onto existing bank systems — portfolio margin optimization plugs into current workflows rather than requiring greenfield replacement. Banks submit risk sensitivities (CRIFs) to DCN; bilateral ISDA contracts remain intact.
Four co-founders: James Davies built clearing infrastructure at Eurex and holds the Constant Maturity Futures patent; Matt Durkin wrote the ISDA Credit Support Annex and has prior DCO filing experience; Neil Nguyen leads an engineering team shipping production systems together since 2021; Wolfgang Rückerl drives commercial execution across European institutional networks. Advised by former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo, former Credit Suisse CFO Dixit Joshi, and Brendan Bradley (Liffe/Eurex/DBAG).
Crypto derivatives clearing launches Q3 2026. OTC FX swaps from Q4 2026. Full CFTC DCO authorization is targeted for mid-2027. Interest rate swaps and ETD follow post-DCO.
DCN is a regulated financial market infrastructure company, not a DeFi protocol. It serves institutional participants (banks, exchanges, FCMs) under CFTC supervision, addressing the regulatory, legal, and risk-management complexity that DeFi protocols do not handle. DCN's founders spent years building on-chain clearing infrastructure — specifically to understand why pure on-chain approaches fail institutional adoption.
Talk to our team about what modern clearing means for your margin, your risk, and your capital.
Talk to our team about what regulated clearing means for your positions, your risk, and your fund.