The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the world’s largest settlement system, and blockchain oracle Chainlink have successfully completed a pilot program with major US banking firms to enhance the tokenization of traditional finance funds. The program, called Smart NAV Pilot, aimed to establish a standardized method of providing net asset value (NAV) data for funds across different blockchains using Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). The pilot demonstrated that by delivering structured data on-chain and establishing standard roles and processes, foundational data could be integrated into various on-chain use cases, such as tokenized funds and contracts that hold data for multiple funds. These capabilities have the potential to support future industry exploration and enable easier access to historical data for funds. The pilot also improved automated data management, minimized disruption to existing market practices, and provided broader application programming interface (API) solutions for price data. Participating US banking firms included American Century Investments, BNY Mellon, Edward Jones, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, JPMorgan, MFS Investment Management, Mid Atlantic Trust, State Street, and U.S. Bank. Following the publication of the DTCC report, the price of Chainlink’s token (LINK) surged by 12.5%, reflecting the market’s positive response to the pilot’s results. LINK has experienced significant growth of over 130% in the past year, in line with the overall upward trend in the crypto market. The DTCC report aligns with the growing interest among major traditional financial institutions in real-world asset tokenization. For instance, BlackRock recently launched a tokenized money market fund called BUIDL on the Ethereum network, which offers native US dollar yields. The fund allows investors to purchase tokens that represent shares in the fund, which mainly invests in assets like US Treasury bills. This fund, also known as the “digital liquidity fund,” operates as an ERC-20 token called BUIDL and is digitized on the Ethereum blockchain.
US banks successfully complete pilot project on tokenization of fund data with DTCC and Chainlink