S&P Global Ratings has recently become a participant in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) ambitious Project Guardian. This initiative, now in its second year, is exploring the potential benefits of asset tokenization for enhancing the liquidity and efficiency of financial markets.
Project Guardian is on a mission to create standards and policy guidelines, aiming to foster a digital asset ecosystem with a strong commercial focus. S&P Global is set to engage in various fixed-income pilot projects. Andrew O’Neill, the analytical lead for S&P Digital Assets, remarked:
“Project Guardian presents a wealth of opportunities for S&P to explore.”
These fixed-income pilot projects involve institutions engaging in foreign exchange and bond transactions against tokenized bonds and currencies’ liquidity pools. Additionally, they are executing repurchase agreements using digital bonds and crafting a framework for listing debt securities, as well as launching an initial token offering for digital tokens on the Singapore Exchange.
In related news, S&P Global has initiated stablecoin ratings, with GUSD, USDP, and USDC receiving the highest rankings.
Project Guardian also encompasses wealth management and foreign exchange operations on public blockchains, keeping an eye on network interoperability. It employs a modular network model consisting of four key components.
Project Guardian network reference model. Source: MAS
The MAS inaugurated Project Guardian in May 2022, with initial participants including JP Morgan, DBS Bank, and SGX venture Marketnode. S&P Global has joined as the 24th member of Project Guardian’s industry consortium, predominantly comprising major banks and asset managers.
The project’s policymaker group includes government entities from the United Kingdom, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland, and France, along with the International Monetary Fund. There’s also a trio of international associations involved.
Source: WazzupCrypto
A key focus of Project Guardian is the advancement of tokenization. In a notable development, JPMorgan successfully executed a live cross-border transaction in November 2022, utilizing tokenized Singapore dollars and Japanese yen on the Polygon blockchain, marking a first for a major bank conducting a decentralized finance operation on a public blockchain.
Emerging from Project Guardian is the innovative deposit token—a type of stablecoin issued by regulated and closely monitored intermediaries. Both the Swiss Bankers Association and JP Morgan have recognized the deposit token’s stability benefits and its potential role in integrating central bank digital currencies with the conventional banking sector.
Highlighting the broader impact of blockchain, the technology is progressively reshaping the real estate industry, one block at a time.