Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov has always emphasized that the development of blockchain technology is not just a technological iteration, but a profound change involving finance, economy, and even social structure. He foresees that with the development of blockchain technology, we will see a more open, transparent and decentralized world. And all of this has begun to appear in some industries that have the greatest impact on the real world, such as finance and trade.
A few years ago, Chainlink began working with more than a dozen financial market infrastructures and institutions such as Swift to explore how these institutions can use the existing Swift infrastructure to efficiently transfer token assets between public and private chains. Since a series of proofs of concept and pilots in the past two years, Chainlink has further laid out its plans to empower the digitalization and tokenization of the capital market through blockchain technology and promote the development of on-chain finance. At the end of October, Chainlink was invited by Chan Ho-lim, Under Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury of the Hong Kong Government, to present a big show in Hong Kong, China - moving its annual flagship conference SmartCon to Asia for the first time. With the theme of Integrating Blockchain and Traditional Finance, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and the Chainlink global team, together with more than 100 core leaders from government agencies, Web3 and capital markets, brought a wonderful agenda to everyone, including Euroclear, Citibank, Fidelity International, HSBC, Franklin Templeton, ANZ Bank, Standard Chartered Ventures, Aptos Labs, Sonieum, Matrixport, CELO, etc., bringing two days of high-quality content output to more than 2,000 viewers from Web3 communities and capital market participants around the world. (For the conference replay, please click https://smartcon.chain.link/video-on-demand )
Last October, Chan attended the 2023 SmartCon event held in Barcelona, Spain, and had an in-depth conversation with Chainlink founder Sergey Nazarov at the conference to discuss Hong Kongs latest development trends in Web3, virtual assets and fintech, as well as Hong Kongs booming fintech ecosystem.
At SmartCon Hong Kong, Chan said: “Having personally experienced the passion and innovative spirit of Chainlink community developers in Barcelona last year, I deeply appreciate the huge potential of this technology in promoting decentralized finance and digital economic transformation. Chainlink plays an important role in the global blockchain ecosystem, and its technology applications cover key areas such as decentralized oracle networks. Therefore, I hope to let Asia, especially Hong Kong, have a deeper understanding of its development trends and explore how to apply its technology to the local fintech and Web3 innovation wave. As an international financial center, Hong Kong has strong Web3 development potential and a sound regulatory system. In the future, I look forward to Chainlink making greater breakthroughs in Asia, especially Hong Kong, to promote the widespread application of decentralized technologies in the region, and help Hong Kong become an important engine for the development of global Web3.”
As discussed in multiple sessions at the conference, the next era will be decentralized, and blockchain has already gone beyond the Web3 industry and played an important role on the real world stage. This week at Singapore Fintech Week, Chainlink and several institutions in the Singapore Monetary Authority’s Project Guardian launched a series of tokenized use cases:
To facilitate cross-chain communication with tokenized fund contracts, SBI Digital Markets created a digital transfer agent smart contract, supported by Chainlink’s industry-standard Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). The pilot demonstrated the feasibility of using smart contracts and the Chainlink platform to streamline fund operations across different blockchain networks and financial systems, bringing fundamental changes to operational efficiency and transparency to the $63 trillion mutual fund industry.
A pilot project jointly conducted by Swift, UBS Asset Management and Chainlink also successfully completed this week, using the Swift network to settle subscriptions and redemptions for tokenized funds. The pilot project covered more than 11,500 financial institutions and more than 200 countries and regions, using the fiat payment system to settle digital asset transactions. The pilot demonstrated how financial institutions can use blockchain technology, the Chainlink platform and the Swift network to settle subscriptions and redemptions for tokenized investment funds, without putting the entire payment process on-chain, allowing a straight-through payment experience. As a result, the entire process of fund subscription and redemption can be automated.
ADDX, ANZ Bank and Chainlink have announced a new use case in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian, focusing on the asset lifecycle of tokenized commercial paper in cross-border transactions. The use case uses ADDX’s investment platform, ANZ Bank’s digital asset services, and Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), including the recently announced Private Transactions feature.
This series of collaborations with leading financial institutions demonstrates that through standardization, blockchain technology can be better integrated into the existing financial system and bring more value to the global economy. Chainlink co-founder said at Singapore Fintech Week that these are exciting work results, and the Chainlink team also looks forward to continuing to work with partners to expand the adoption of these use cases and help scale on-chain finance.
From Sibos held in Beijing in October this year, to Hong Kong Fintech Week and SmartCon 2024, to Singapore Fintech Week, it is not difficult to see that the integration of blockchain technology and traditional finance is gradually deepening. Chainlink has long been planning not only to be a bridge connecting TradFi and DeFi, but also to build a new economic model through technological changes, so that various industries can integrate and prosper together and jointly promote the development of the global economy.
