According to CoinDesk, The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the world's leading securities settlement system, has successfully completed a pilot project with blockchain oracle Chainlink and several major U.S. financial institutions. The project, known as Smart NAV, aimed to expedite the tokenization of funds.
The objective of Smart NAV was to create a standardized procedure for generating and distributing net asset value (NAV) data of funds across virtually any private or public blockchains using Chainlink's interoperability protocol CCIP. The market participants in this project included American Century Investments, BNY Mellon, Edward Jones, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, JPMorgan, MFS Investment Management, Mid Atlantic Trust, State Street, and U.S. Bank.
Upon completion of the pilot, DTCC discovered that by delivering structured data on-chain and establishing standard roles and processes, foundational data could be integrated into a variety of on-chain use cases. These use cases include tokenized funds and 'bulk consumer' smart contracts, which are contracts that hold data for multiple funds.
The pilot was conducted in the context of the increasing tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) such as bonds, funds, and other traditional investments. This has emerged as one of the most popular applications for blockchain technology. Several financial heavyweights like BlackRock, Citi, and HSBC have entered the field, seeking benefits such as operational efficiencies, faster settlements, and greater transparency compared to traditional financial systems.
