Today the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) shared the results of its first Project Guardian pilots that explore DeFi and tokenization. And it announced two more pilots, for trade finance and wealth management.
Standard Chartered is leading a project to explore the tokenization of trade finance assets.
“Digital assets are here to stay, and we see its potential to play a greater role in supporting the real economy,” said Kai Fehr, Global Head of Trade & Working Capital at Standard Chartered.
“By transforming trade assets into transferable instruments, we aim to improve the accessibility to an asset class – which has largely been the domain of banks – with participation from a broader range of investors. Not only can we potentially narrow the USD1.7 trillion global trade finance gap, this also offers investors the option to balance their portfolio with a digital token that has traceable intrinsic value.”
For the second wealth management pilot, HSBC and UOB are working with Marketnode, the blockchain tokenization platform. The aim is to issue digitally native wealth management products to improve efficiency and make them accessible to a wider audience.
MAS has invited other industry participants to participate in the FinTech Regulatory Sandbox.
Meanwhile, today the results of the first DeFi pilots by Onyx by JP Morgan, DBS Bank and SBI Digital Asset Holdings were shared.
DeFi is one of four focus areas of Project Guardian. Today’s two new pilot projects appear to focus on tokenization. The other areas are trust anchors to enable institutions to participate in public blockchains and exploring open interoperable networks.
