Jump Trading buys Certus One

Blockchain engineering firm Certus One has become Jump Trading’s first acquisition as investment and M&A activity in the digital assets landscape shows no sign of slowing.

The deal, terms of which were not announced, brings the blockchain validation firm’s team into Jump’s own engineering segment as the two firms seek to “double down” on efforts to grow DeFi and Proof of Stake.

Following the deal, Certus One says in a post that its work on Wormhole – a Solana/Ethereum/Terra bridge – and its smart hardware security module (HSM) solution for validation continues forward. The firm’s open source cloud operating system it had been building with a small team has been spun out into a new, independent open source company called Monogon and will continue to be part of Certus One’s vision in enabling anyone to run decentralised infrastructure.

In its blog post announcing the deal, co-founder and CTO Leopold Schabel, writes, “Nobody can succeed in this new world alone. Building a DeFi ecosystem is a team effort, and contributing means growing the pie for everyone. The rising tide lifts all boats and true decentralisation can only be achieved by collaborating and building to enable anyone to operate resilient and secure infrastructure, from individual to institutions.

“Jump deeply shares these values and has been an early and fervent DeFi supporter with a strong builder ethos, supporting and helping realise major blockchain projects like Solana, Terra and Pyth.”