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

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.
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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.
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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.
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For More Information
Please email FinTech_Sandbox@mas.gov.sg .