Infrastructure
Market infrastructure operators are not replacing their systems but connecting them to shared ledgers.
Interoperability and common technical standards remain critical to the development of tokenised markets.
Tokenising existing assets means interaction with legacy infrastructure is necessary, and so fragmentation becomes an issue. As the tokenised asset market grows alongside the relevant cash legs, the issue becomes a lack of interoperability between the public blockchains, the banks' own permissioned networks, and the platforms run by market-infrastructure operators. The result is constrained secondary market liquidity.
The clearest pattern of the past year is incumbents building bridges to these networks rather than replacements for their own systems:
- DTCC is minting a subset of the US Treasuries held at its central securities depository on the Canton Network, a blockchain built for regulated institutions in which each participant sees only the transactions it is party to, and has joined Euroclear as co-chair of the foundation that governs the network. DTCC ran live trades in tokenised Treasuries and equities with more than 30 firms in July 2026, ahead of a tokenisation service due to launch in October
- Broadridge's repo platform settles on a shared ledger while leaving firms' existing trading and post-trade workflows in place
- Swift declared its blockchain-based ledger ready for initial use in July, with 17 banks preparing to pilot round-the-clock cross-border payments in tokenised deposits
Key statistic
Stablecoins are almost exclusively USD-backed
Broadridge’s Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) processed an average of $359 billion a day in September 2026, $7.5 trillion over the month, up from $351 billion a day in August. Participants’ securities stay with their existing custodians and are represented by tokens on a shared ledger, while cash still moves over conventional payment rails. There are two important caveats . The figure measures turnover, not value held: repo is short-dated, so the same securities may be financed, and counted, many times in a month. It is also self-reported. Broadridge is now extending the model beyond repo through DLX, its recently launched multi-asset tokenisation platform.
Average daily repo transaction value processed through Broadridge’s distributed ledger platform in September 2026.
A similar pattern is seen among central banks. The Eurosystem's Pontes links private ledgers to its TARGET settlement services, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's EnsembleTX pilot settles tokenised deposits between banks through Hong Kong's existing real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system. Though bridges lower the cost of adoption, they also mean tokenised markets inherit the hours, access rules and constraints of the systems they plug into.
Connecting these networks requires cross-chain delivery-versus-payment: settling an asset on one ledger against its cash leg on another, simultaneously, so neither side is left exposed. The Kinexys, Ondo, and Chainlink test transaction settled tokenised US Treasuries against bank deposits across separate chains showed this was possible.
The goal behind this effort is a shared, verifiable record. If asset and cash move on ledgers that can be reconciled in real time, the industry could collapse much of the post-trade reconciliation that traditional settlement carries. To realise this, standards for verification and auditability must be agreed.
In conventional markets a bond has one International Securities Identification Number (ISIN) wherever it is held. Tokenisation adds a second layer: the token that represents the bond on a particular blockchain, which has its own identifier under a separate ISO standard, the Digital Token Identifier (DTI). The same security issued on two chains can end up with two different identifiers, so firms keep their own tables mapping one to the other. In March 2026 DTCC, Euroclear and Clearstream, three of the world's largest post-trade infrastructures, published a joint framework calling for common identifiers, asset classifications and message formats, so that an asset is recognised the same way on a ledger as in existing systems. The body that coordinates ISINs globally now distributes DTIs too, an early sign of the two identifier systems converging. The move to ISO 20022 is instructive here. The program has taken years and is still being completed, with Swift removing unstructured address data from payment messages this November. Tokenised markets may be at the start of the same work.
Broadridge's DLR illustrates a pattern seen across tokenised market infrastructure: the shared ledger handles settlement while participants’ existing trading and post-trade systems stay in place. This lowers the cost of adoption but leaves the surrounding processes, and their constraints, unchanged
Key statistic
Setting common standards before tokenised markets fragment
Industry groups are trying to agree common standards for how tokenised assets are identified, described and handled across different ledgers before fragmentation hardens. An August 2026 white paper from a group backed by MIT Connection Science proposes an Interoperability Standards Organization for Digital Assets (I-SODA), modelled on the neutral bodies that standardised the internet. It would run three workstreams: a common data model for each asset, a common set of smart-contract functions such as mint and burn, and a map of the legal and governance rules that apply. Its authors put tokenised real world assets at less than 0.01% of the $247 trillion of assets under management globally, and argue that without shared standards each new tokenised product adds another isolated pool of liquidity.
Tokenised real-world assets as a share of $247 trillion in global assets under management
The UK illustrates how central banks are hedging across settlement assets rather than choosing one. The authorities have confirmed that certain stablecoins can be used alongside tokenised deposits to settle trades in the Digital Securities Sandbox (DSS). Since June 2026 the Bank of England’s sandbox guidance has admitted UK-issued coins in any currency and can approve overseas coins pegged to other currencies if they meet minimum criteria mirroring the FCA's requirements, but not overseas sterling coins. Seventeen firms have passed the sandbox’s first gate, and three, HSBC, LSEG B3, and ClearToken, have been approved to go live. The Bank is also considering whether tokenised assets should be eligible collateral in its Sterling Monetary Framework operations, starting with DIGIT, the government’s pilot digital gilt. In parallel, the Bank is building a synchronisation service, which it committed in May 2026 to launch in 2028, that would let tokenised trades settle in central bank money without putting that money on a blockchain.
The mechanism is simple in outline. Funds are earmarked in an account in RT2, the Bank’s renewed real-time gross settlement system, the asset is locked on its own ledger, and both are released together once the trade’s conditions are met, so neither leg settles without the other. Third-party synchronisation operators coordinate each trade but never hold central bank money, and account-holding banks decide which operators may instruct earmarks on their accounts.
Developments in the UK
Settling tokenised trades in central bank money, on RTGS hours
The Bank is testing this in its Synchronisation Lab, which went live in May 2026 with 18 firms. They include LSEG, Swift, Partior, Baton Systems, ClearToken, OSTTRA, Tokenovate and Chainlink, and their use cases range from delivery-versus-payment for tokenised securities and collateral management to cross-border FX and house purchases. The Lab emulates the core of RT2 but is not a regulatory sandbox and moves no real money payments. It is comparing at least two models: one in which the operator sends the earmarking instruction to RT2, and one in which the account-holding bank does so at the operator’s direction. The Lab runs for around six months, after which after which participants will present at an industry showcase and the Bank will publish its learnings for the live service. An update on how synchronisation operators will be regulated is expected in early 2027.
The contrast with the Eurosystem is instructive. Pontes, which launched in September 2026, links market DLT platforms to TARGET Services. Participants can settle either with cash tokens on a Eurosystem DLT platform or through T2, and final settlement is reached once the cash leg completes in T2. The UK model keeps the cash entirely in RTGS and has third-party operators coordinate around it, so central bank money never sits on a ledger.That avoids putting central bank money on a blockchain, but it tightly ties synchronised settlement to RTGS operating hours.
The cash leg's operating hours matter too. From September 2027 CHAPS will open at 01:30 rather than 06:00, giving 16.5 hours of settlement each working day. The Bank’s May 2026 consultation, which closed in August, proposed Sunday and bank-holiday settlement no earlier than 2029, 22-hour weekdays no earlier than 2031, and an eventual service of 22 or 23.5 hours a day, seven days a week, in part to meet the demands of always-on tokenised markets. Until then, a tokenised trade settling in sterling central bank money will only be as always-on as RTGS itself.
Industry perspectives
Industry leaders reflect on the report’s key findings.
Daniel Holden
Co-founder of Keystone
and TPA Advisory Board Member
"Tokenisation can create value within a platform, but the challenge is settling across platforms. Each serves its own participants, and it’s unrealistic to expect competitors to use one another’s settlement infrastructure. Firms end up pre-funding multiple platforms or moving assets between ledgers, adding funding costs and settlement risk. Clearing adds another layer: members need to meet margin calls in one place while their assets are spread across several custodians and ledgers. What’s missing is neutral settlement infrastructure connecting those platforms, custodians and clearing networks, so assets stay with each party’s custodian and trades and margin calls settle all-or-nothing without pre-funding.”
Natalie Lewis
Partner and Head of Fintech, Market Infrastructure & Payments
Travers Smith LLP
"When moving capital markets on-chain, we must make sure that we don't lose the benefits of tokenisation by failing to modernise the cash leg. It's encouraging to see the Bank of England open to using stablecoins (once approved by the Bank) for settlement in the DSS, plus the Bank's modernised RTGS system potentially offering synchronous settlement in central bank money. That said, on the DSS, we must make the necessary changes to our settlement finality and financial collateral laws as we identify them in the DSS, not wait until 2028! This is essential for market adoption at scale."