Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon and Others Test Enterprise Blockchain for Tokenized Assets

Bluechip financial blockchain provider Digital Asset has completed a test of its so-called Canton Network, with the participation of financial heavyweights like Goldman Sachs, BNY Mellon, DRW, Oliver Wyman, and Paxos.

The Canton pilot, which involved 15 asset managers, 13 banks, four custodians and three exchanges, allowed the firms to seamlessly transact and settle tokenized assets and deal with fund registry, digital cash, repo, securities lending, and margin management transactions, according to a press release on Tuesday.

“The successful execution of over 350 simulated transactions proved how a network of interoperable applications can seamlessly connect to enable secure, atomic transactions across multiple parts of the capital markets value chain,” the firm said. “It also demonstrated the potential benefits of using such a network to reduce counterparty and settlement risk, optimize capital, and enable intraday margin cycles,” the statement added.

The interest in the world of enterprise blockchain, where large firms look for efficiencies to be gained from using private or permissioned versions of the technology underlying public networks like Bitcoin and Ethereum, is being driven by a renewed focus on tokenization: the realization of existing financial assets as blockchain-based tokens.

“Canton allows previously siloed financial systems to connect and synchronize in previously impossible ways while abiding by the current regulatory guardrails,” said Digital Asset CEO Yuval Rooz in the statement.

Additional pilot participants included: abrdn, Baymarkets, BNP Paribas, BOK Financial, Cboe Global Markets, Commerzbank, DTCC, Fiùtur, Generali Investments, Harvest Fund Management, IEX, Nomura, Northern Trust, Pirum, Standard Chartered, State Street, Visa, and Wellington Management with Deloitte acting as an observer, and Microsoft as a supporting partner.