America’s largest financial institutions are teaming up to explore the development of an on-chain settlement system for tokenized cash and assets. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) announced that members of the regulated U.S. financial sector have launched a proof-of-concept (PoC) called the Regulated Settlement Network (RSN). The RSN PoC aims to investigate the possibility of a shared ledger that settles tokenized commercial bank money, wholesale central bank money, U.S. Treasury securities, and other tokenized assets. Participants in the program include Citi, J.P. Morgan, Mastercard, Swift, TD Bank N.A., U.S. Bank, USDF, Wells Fargo, Visa, and Zions Bancorp. Deloitte will provide advisory services, while two unnamed vendors will offer technology infrastructure and legal analysis. SIFMA will serve as the project manager. The RSN PoC will be conducted in a test environment and will simulate multi-asset transactions in U.S. dollars. The goal is to identify opportunities to enhance the operation of multi-asset settlements for domestic users of U.S. dollar-denominated financial instruments. Raj Dhamodharan, executive vice president of blockchain and digital assets at Mastercard, emphasized the importance of collaboration between public and private organizations to leverage blockchain technology for real-world use cases. Some leaders in the crypto industry have predicted that the traditional financial sector will adopt blockchain and tokenized transactions. Sergey Nazarov, the creator of Chainlink, believes that the global financial system is transitioning into a blockchain and smart contract format, facilitated by oracle networks.
