According to CertiK, the Russian ruble-based A7A5 stablecoin continued to grow despite Western sanctions, processing a total of over $110 billion in onchain transactions.
CertiK claims that A7A5 has captured approximately 43% of the global non-US dollar stablecoin market, with its number of holders increasing from 13,000 to 29,000 wallets between February 2025 and May 2026.
The security firm has identified A7A5 as one of the clearest examples of a sanctions-dodging stablecoin ecosystem, linking it to Russian cross-border settlement firms.
This escalate highlights the limits of Western sanctions against blockchain-based payment systems, including the European Union’s 19th sanctions package adopted on October 23, 2025, which banned transactions involving A7A5 from November 12. CertiK said the reserve structure placed key assets beyond the immediate reach of Western law enforcement.
Cumulative A7A5 activity, all-time graph. Source: CertiK
A7A5 was issued in January 2025 by Senior Vector LLC, a Kyrgyz entity acting on behalf of Russian cross-border settlement company A7 LLC, which is co-owned by Moldovan-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor and Russian state defense lender Promsvyazbank.
Russian authorities later recognized A7A5 under the country’s digital financial assets regulations.
Stabilcoin recorded $11.2 billion in trading volume on A7A5/RUB and $6.1 billion in A7A5/USDT trades, primarily through Grinex, which is the successor to Garantex, a platform that previously served as a money laundering venue for Conti, Black Basta, LockBit and some illicit funds attributed to North Korea-linked actors, including $30 million from the Horizon Bridge hack in 2022 r. sent to Garantex in February 2023.
US secret services seized Garantex’s domain in March 2025, while Tether froze approximately $28 million in US dollars (USDT) held in wallets controlled by Garantex.
A7A5 is designed to replicate some of the functionality of USDT stablecoins, while maintaining issuance, reserve and freezing rights outside of Western-controlled infrastructure.
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Could Western Sanctions Restrict A7A5 Trade?
According to Jonathan Riss, OSINT and Blockchain Intelligence analyst at CertiK, the creators of the ruble-based stablecoin designed it without a centralized kill switch, which means that the intelligent contracts responsible for freezing wallets and funds are completely controlled by developers from Russia and Kyrgyzstan.
Stablecoin reserves are also found in Central Asian banking networks, mainly in Kyrgyzstan, and in the Russian banking system, meaning the funds are beyond the reach of Western sanctions.
A7A5 also relies on a distributed distribution model through decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity pools such as Curve and Uniswap to prevent being tied up by centralized exchanges, CertiK’s Riss told Cointelegraph, adding:
“While Western regulators cannot directly rewrite the Ethereum or Tron blockchain to remove A7A5, the EU 19 package and parallel actions by the US and UK are targeting physical and digital bottlenecks.”
The stablecoin’s creators designed A7A5 by carefully considering the above three “immunities” to avoid sanctions that crippled their previous evasion methods such as Tether’s USDT, Riss said.
A7A5 network graph. Source: CertiK
Shor owns 51% of A7 LLC as majority owner. He served as a former member of the Moldovan Parliament until 2017, when he was convicted by a Moldovan court in connection with the theft of approximately $1 billion from three Moldovan banks in 2014. In 2019, he fled Moldova and obtained Russian citizenship.
He was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in 2023. He is currently in Moscow.
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