Schemes and Initiatives
 Published Date: 19 October 2022

Project Guardian

Project Guardian is a collaborative initiative with the financial industry that seeks to test the feasibility of applications in asset tokenisation and DeFi while managing risks to financial stability and integrity.

 

Objectives

  • Industry Pilots with traditional financial institutions and FinTechs to understand opportunities and risk areas.
  • Assess longer-term transformational impact and aim for safe development of ecosystem using industry experiments and research as a reference.
  • Establish policy guidelines and framework. Define acceptable governance model or accountability; Technical standards for regulated DeFi.

  

Focus Areas

  1. Open, interoperable networks

    Explore the use of public blockchains to build open, interoperable networks that enable digital assets to be traded across platforms and liquidity pools

  2. Trust anchors

    Establish a trusted environment for the execution of DeFi protocols through a common trust layer of independent trust anchors

  3. Asset tokenisation

    Examine the representation of securities in the form of digital bearer assets and the use of tokenised deposits issued by deposit-taking institutions on public blockchains

  4. Institutional grade DeFi protocols

    Study the introduction of regulatory safeguards and controls into DeFi protocols to mitigate against market manipulation and operational risk

 

Collaboration Areas

    Onboarding Icon
    Live Pilot Industry
    Pilot with traditional financial institutions and FinTechs in Singapore and other jurisdiction to understand opportunities and risk areas.


    Policy Development

    Develop rulebook, governance model, and reviewing legal and regulatory frameworks for tokenized assets.


    Technology Standards

    Develop technical standards, i.e. Trust Anchors, Open networks, institutional grade Defi.

 

Current Pilots

Global Liquidity Pool


DBS Bank, JP Morgan and SBI Digital Asset Holdings conducted foreign exchange and government bond transactions against liquidity pools comprising of tokenised Singapore Government Securities Bonds, Japanese Government Bonds, Japanese Yen (JPY) and Singapore Dollar (SGD). 

 

A live cross-currency transaction[1] involving tokenised JPY and SGD deposits was successfully conducted. In addition, a simulated exercise was performed involving the buying and selling of tokenised government bonds.

 

More information can be found in the whitepaper report.

 

[1] A live trade with real-world assets was conducted as an isolated exercise, under a bilateral commercial arrangement to recognize zero profit and loss based on mutually agreed transactions terms.

Trade Finance

Standard Chartered Bank is leading an initiative to explore the issuance of tokens linked to trade finance assets. The project aims to digitise the trade distribution market, by transforming trade assets into transferable instruments that are more transparent and accessible to investors.

Wealth Management

HSBC and UOB are working with Marketnode to enable native digital issuance of wealth management products, enhancing issuance efficiency and accessibility for investors. 

 

For More Information

Please email FinTech_Sandbox@mas.gov.sg .