MIZUHIKI — The Japan Chain
Testnet is live

About us

The New Global Standard from Japan

MIZUHIKI is Japan's sovereign, Ethereum-equivalent L1, purpose-built for regulated stablecoins. Onshore-validated and compliance-first, it delivers sub-second JPY settlement with protocol-level identity verification and sustainable issuer economics.

Mission

New Utility Standard for Japan's Digital Economy

Our mission is to make MIZUHIKI the default settlement rail for regulated stablecoin payments in Japan and to demonstrate that sovereign, Ethereum-equivalent public blockchains can become the standard infrastructure of regulated digital finance.

Governance

Our Guiding Principles

The MIZUHIKI Compliance Suite

Compliance at the platform layer

The MIZUHIKI Compliance Suite provides identity verification, regulatory compliance, and risk management as shared, on-chain primitives — available free to every application on the network.

MIZUHIKI Compliance Suite diagram: three opt-in modules — Identity (eKYC and My Number), Compliance Validation (sanctions screening, wallet risk, issuer eligibility, transaction monitoring), and Risk Management (transaction limits, asset gating, multi-party approvals, geographic restrictions).

The team

Our Leadership

  • Portrait of Russell Cummer

    Russell Cummer

    Founder and Co-Representative Director

    Russell Cummer is the founder of Paidy, Japan's leading BNPL service. Paidy partnered with over 700,000 merchants, reaching Unicorn status in 2020 before PayPal acquired it in 2021. Previously, Russell worked on credit and derivatives trading at Goldman Sachs in Tokyo. Russell holds a Master of Science in Financial Mathematics from Stanford University.

    Goldman Sachs
    Paidy
  • Portrait of Gen Kanai

    Gen Kanai

    Co-Representative Director

    Gen Kanai is a blockchain industry investor and open-source internet executive. Kanai previously served as a Director at Animoca Brands, and previously led the Mozilla Foundation's expansion to Asia. Kanai holds a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College.

    Animoca Brands
    Decima
  • Portrait of Szilvia Kovari-Krecsmary

    Szilvia Kovari-Krecsmary

    COO

    Szilvia Kovari-Krecsmary is a visionary business leader with a track record of building, scaling, and transforming products, businesses, and organizations in highly competitive, fast-moving markets across five continents. Most recently she served as CSO at Paidy, overseeing strategy, product and marketing. She holds a BA from Tokyo University and MBA from Hult Ashridge.

    Netflix
    Paidy
  • Portrait of Jeff Wentworth

    Jeff Wentworth

    Chief Architect

    Jeff Wentworth is the co-founder of Curvegrid, a Japan-based enterprise blockchain company. Previously, Jeff was Vice President and global product owner of block and object storage at Goldman Sachs. He holds a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

    Goldman Sachs
    Curvegrid

The Foundation

The Foundation

MIZUHIKI is governed by the Foundation for MIZUHIKI, a general incorporated association (ippan shadan houjin) registered in Japan.

The Foundation holds stewardship of the MIZUHIKI protocol and the ecosystem programmes that support its growth.

It does not engage in commercial activities that compete with applications or operators on the network.

Core responsibilities

  • Protocol governance and upgrade management
  • Validator network oversight and operator onboarding
  • Ecosystem and developer community programmes
  • Stewardship of the Foundation-allocated MIZU supply