Australian Bank ANZ Joins Singapore's Project Guardian

ANZ is the latest entity to join the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Project Guardian.

Through the deal, the Australian bank will partner with Chainlink Labs and ADDX to explore tokenised RWAs in financial markets and interoperability between private blockchains to exchange RWAs.

Launched in 2022, Project Guardian brings together public and private sector players to develop a framework for issuing and trading digital tokens representing traditional assets like bonds and securities.

ANZ Singapore country head Mark Evans described MAS as a "global leader in its unwavering commitment to digitise the financial system through industry collaboration."

He added that by joining Project Guardian, ANZ can "play a role in fast-tracking the development of a stable, secure digital asset ecosystem."

Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov emphasised that interoperability is "critical for financial institutions to transact with tokenized assets at scale" and that Chainlink CCIP is a "key enabler for accelerating the growth of the tokenized economy."

Earlier this year, credit rating agency Moody's announced its participation in Project Guardian to explore the potential of asset tokenization in financial markets.

Moody's involvement specifically focuses on the fixed-income workstream of Project Guardian. The company leverages its expertise to provide risk analysis for tokenized fixed-income products. 

Deutsche Bank also joined Project Guardian to explore asset tokenization earlier this year.

The initiative explores the feasibility of asset tokenization in regulated financial markets and sees the German financial giant participate as part of the asset and wealth management workstream.

Deutsche Bank is testing an open, interoperable blockchain platform designed to manage tokenized and digital funds. The bank will then propose protocol standards based on its findings.