Nomura’s crypto affiliate Laser Digital has made a strategic investment in the Orderly Network, which refers to itself as a “decentralized trading infrastructure” on the NEAR blockchain. The network recently raised a $20 million funding round from venture capitalists, including Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research.

Orderly is taking a different approach than most decentralized exchanges (DEXs) that use automated market makers (AMMs). These AMMs tend to take advantage of simplistic algorithms to enable trading and the bid-ask spreads are not the tightest. Part of that margin is earned by arbitrageurs. Instead, Orderly uses the more conventional concept of market makers and order books. He describes AMMs as “designed for retail traders and often do not facilitate a more sophisticated trading strategy.”

Orderly is not a DEX itself, but it does provide DEX infrastructure.

“Decentralized finance (DeFi) is rapidly evolving and the Orderly Network strives to meet the needs of institutional clients by providing seamless access to digital assets,” said Ran Yi, co-founder of Orderly Network. “The seed fund is a vote of confidence that we can meet those requirements.”

Centralized crypto exchange WOOFI and NEAR co-founded the project, and the WOOFI DEX went live in October, powered by the Orderly Network.

“Orderly is one of our first investments given its unique position of having access to deep liquidity and an order book matching engine that can accommodate high yield and rate caps,” said Olivier Dang, director of ventures at Laser. Digital.

Laser Digital is Nomura’s newly incorporated institutional digital assets subsidiary in Switzerland. It is chaired by Steve Ashley, who previously ran Nomura’s wholesale division.

It intends to invest in DeFi, centralized finance (CeFi), web3, and blockchain infrastructure. In addition, it will launch secondary operations for digital assets and products for investors.