The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced a new initiative on Monday to promote tokenization in the financial services sector, which includes establishing a commercial network to deepen the liquidity of tokenized assets, developing an ecosystem for market infrastructure, promoting an industry framework for the implementation of tokenized assets, and enabling the use of common settlement facilities for tokenized assets.
Over the past two years, MAS has convened more than 40 financial institutions, industry associations, and international policymakers from seven jurisdictions under a collaborative industry initiative called “Project Guardian” to conduct industry experiments on the use of asset tokenization in capital markets. To date, the project has conducted over 15 industry experiments on a variety of financial products in six currencies.
Implementation of the industry framework for tokenization
According to the press release, in order to promote widespread acceptance and implementation of tokenized assets by financial institutions, MAS has also released an industry framework developed by members of the Project Guardian industry working group.
The Guardian Fixed Income Framework (GFIF) will provide guidance, enhance capabilities, and promote the adoption of tokenized fixed income solutions in the debt capital markets. The Guardian Funds Framework (GFF) will offer recommendations for best practices in the tokenization of funds, including provisions for developing tokenized investment products composed of a variety of assets.