Singapore’s Central Bank, DBS, JPMorgan Collaborate to Explore Uses of Digital Assets, Defi

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) will partner with leading banks and financial services companies to explore asset tokenization and distributed finance (Defi) applications DBS Bank and JPMorgan will pilot the first project.

Project Guardian Launched

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore’s central bank, announced Tuesday that it has partnered with the financial services industry to launch Project Guardian. The central bank describes Project Guardian as “a joint initiative with the financial industry to explore the economic potential and value-added use cases of asset tokenization” and “decentralized finance (defi).”

Singapore Deputy Prime Minister and Coordinating Minister for Economic Policy Heng Swee Keat announced the launch of Project Guardian at the Asia Tech x Singapore Summit on Tuesday.

MAS elaborated that “Project Guardian’s first industry pilot will explore potential defi applications in the wholesale financing market,” adding that.

The pilot, led by DBS Bank Ltd, JP Morgan, and Marketnode, will create a permitted liquidity pool consisting of tokenized bonds and deposits.

“The pilot aims to execute secured borrowing and lending on a public blockchain-based network through smart contract execution.” MAS continued.

Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer of the Central Bank, said that MAS is “closely monitoring the innovation and growth of the digital assets ecosystem, and the new technologies associated with them for consumers, investors and the financial system as a whole. He explained that “we are working through the potential opportunities and risks.

he noted.” Learning from Project Guardian will help inform policy markets about the regulatory guardrails needed to leverage the benefits of defi while mitigating its risks.”

Han Kwee Juan, head of group planning and strategy at DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest bank, commented:

DBS is pleased to lead the effort to explore the potential of leveraging digital assets and defi concepts to enhance efficiency and scalability in trading, clearing and settlement, while managing risks to financial stability and integrity.

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