Today Ownera announced a $20 million Series A funding that includes JP Morgan and LRC Group, which has $6 billion in real estate assets under management. Ownera developed the open source FINP2P protocol to enable security tokens issued on different platforms and blockchains to be distributed to a large pool of institutions.
“It is commonly accepted that the tokenization of securities has the capacity to digitize markets with total value in the trillions of dollars. Dozens of platforms are being deployed by financial institutions across the market, and our job is to be the neutral layer, seamlessly interconnecting them into one global distribution and liquidity network, using open-source network specifications”, said Ownera Co-Founder & CEO, Ami Ben-David.
Blockchain is intended to create this efficient superhighway for digital assets breaking down all the silos. But without a solution like FINP2P there’s a risk of creating new silos for tokenized assets.
For example, there are several security token issuance platforms, but they are comparatively isolated so far. In Asia, ADDX issues tokens that are traded on its platform. Likewise, Securitize launched security tokens for a KKR fund yesterday. In France, Societe General FORGE has a security token issuance platform used to issue a European Investment Bank bond on Ethereum. And in Switzerland, SDX launched a SIX bond on its exchange.
What if an institution wanted to offer all of these tokens to its clients (we don’t know if any have relationships with Ownera). For now, the institutions probably would have to integrate with each platform separately, which is where Ownera and FINP2P come in. The idea is that each platform integrates with FINP2P, and then the institution that wants access to them all only has to integrate once with FINP2P’s order routing solution. Ironically, FINP2P does not use blockchain itself.
This creates a far larger pool of liquidity for every connected issuance.
“Interconnectivity is key to maintaining a liquid marketplace for tokenized assets,” said Scott Lucas, Head of Markets DLT, J.P. Morgan. “Ownera has developed a solution with the potential to connect multiple platforms to start building towards that liquid marketplace.”
Lucas joins Ownera’s board and LRC Group’s Chairman becomes its Executive Chairman. Other participants in the round included Draper Goren Holm, tokentus Investment AG, Accomplice Blockchain, Polymorphic Capital, The Ropart Group and Archax.
