In July this year DTCC, the central U.S. post-trade market infrastructure, converted real world assets in its custody into tokens to be used in a series of real production trades across asset classes involving both traditional and crypto-native firms. Some firms estimate the DTCC Tokenization Service could increase balance sheet efficiency between 30% to 50% when it fully launches in October.

On 15 July 2026 the live transactions included collateral pledging, security lending, U.S. Treasury/repo delivery-versus-payment (DVP) trade, equity DVP trade, equity delivery-versus-delivery (DVD) trade, equity token transfer and central counterparty (CCP) margin workflows.

The digital conversions occurred on LFDT’s Besu, DTCC’s private network, and Canton Network, Digital Assets’ blockchain for financial institutions which has built-in privacy controls,

DTCC said this marked a “significant” milestone that sets the stage for the DTCC Tokenization Service to launch this October. Clients will have the choice to tokenize assets in their DTCC participant account, use it on a blockchain of their choice, and then return it to its traditional form.

Brian Steele, president of clearing & securities services at DTCC, said in a statement that market participants will soon have the best of both worlds because DTC-tokenized assets maintain the same investor protections, entitlements and ownership rights as traditional securities, all while enabling greater efficiency, programmability and security.

Steele added: “DTCC successfully showcased how tokenization can enable real-time collateral mobility, enhance liquidity and capital efficiency, reduce counterparty risk and support interoperability between traditional and digital ecosystems.”

Kelly Mathieson, chief business development officer at Digital Asset, told Markets Media that as well as preparing for the launch of the DTCC Tokenization Service, Digital  Asset is working on bringing more real world assets, capital markets, and financial services onchain.

Mathieson described 15 July as “a moment” when all the technical work, industry work and regulatory conversations came together to form a live secondary market ecosystem of real commercial trades involving approximately 30 market participants that lasted for a few hours.

She said: “I can’t wait for the ecosystem to exist without going away in October. I think it gave a real lens into what October will feel like and it has been encouraging to see the volume of additional market participants that are now getting engaged.”

The day provided the first real experience of what an operating model could look and feel like in world of digital assets as business across firms were involved including the operations team, the legacy system technology team, risk management and legal.

“There was a lot of positive reaction as it gave a very focused, very objective, very clear view on how this could exist  and what is needed to  scale the model in order to handle market volumes,” added Mathieson. “

After full launch of the service in October, she expects a gradual rollout as firms and their underlying clients adapt their operating models, further functionality to be developed and for the initiative to have global impact, especially as the DTCC has dialogue with other financial market infrastructures.

“The DTCC has a voice that can cause that acceleration of focus in other high-quality liquid asset markets,” she added.

Mathieson highlighted that U.S. Treasuries are often one half of global transactions such as repos, and ETFs often include equities from around the world and so are likely to be among the first use cases for DTTC’s new service which could lead to a harmonization of standards.

“The killer app will be asset utility, the ability to mobilize assets and settle in real time,” she added. “On July 15 people realized transactions were settling immediately and for anybody who has been working in a securities services or in operations, that is a big change.”

Mathieson estimated there are approximately $300 trillion of high quality liquid assets in the world, but only between 10% and 11% are being used as collateral. Digital Asset has been working with financial institutions who have estimated that the DTCC Tokenization Service could increase balance sheet efficiency by between 30% to 50%, increasing their trading capacity.

She expects the full launch of DTCC’s tokenization service in October to bring more real-world assets into the Canton ecosystem, especially from outside the U.S., and more applications to be built on Canton by firms such as TradeWeb, which provides electronic trading across asset classes, Talos, the infrastructure provider and Temple Digital Group, which is building the first native trading platform, global asset registry and issuance platform for Canton.

“One of the neatest things is going to be when a treasury management solution is created that uses DTCC and Visa, which is bringing its payment rails to Canton,” added Mathieson. “There is going to be an interesting moment when people realize they can use both of these apps.”

Franklin Templeton

Canton will also focus on continuing to add liquidity sources including more stablecoins, tokenized deposits and  tokenized money market funds.

Franklin Templeton’s Benji technology platform joined the Canton blockchain in November last year. The Benji technology platform is the U.S. asset manager’s proprietary blockchain-integrated stack, designed to facilitate the administration of token-based investments. In 2021 Franklin Templeton used the platform to launch the first U.S.-registered mutual fund that used blockchain-integrated technology to process transactions and record share ownership. The firm has since launched several fully onchain tokenized investment products.

Georg Schneider, head of RWA at Digital Asset, said in a statement at the time: “With Franklin Templeton joining the network, institutions gain access to a trusted provider to enhance collateral mobility and deepen liquidity options across our Global Collateral Network.”

Franklin Templeton Digital Assets has become a super validator on Canton.

Yuval Rooz, chief executive of Digital Asset, said on X:

Something cool coming soon 🙂 https://t.co/30VIJayLrF

— Yuval Rooz (@YuvalRooz) August 3, 2026

@CryptoRich74 explained on X that super validators are an invitation-only class of nodes that run the network’s shared interoperability layer, validate Canton Coin transfers, and hold the votes that decide how the protocol changes. He added: “They are the institutional core of a blockchain built for regulated finance, and the group has grown to around 55 operators, including Visa, DTCC, Chainlink, Nasdaq, and Circle.”

In contrast, a  standard validator validates only the transactions its operator is directly involved in, using the Canton Coin application that every validator node runs.

55 institutions, including Visa, DTCC, Nasdaq, Chainlink, and Circle, governing Canton's shared coordination layer without sharing underlying transaction data. @BSCNews' @CryptoRich74 details how the Super Validator structure works, who's in it, and why it matters. https://t.co/D3L0amEJ7k

— Canton Network (@CantonNetwork) May 22, 2026

The design answers a long-standing problem in institutional blockchain adoption of how to get competing firms to share infrastructure without sharing data, according to @CryptoRich74.

He said: “Canton’s answer is local, permissioned validation for each application paired with a curated Super Validator set that synchronizes the whole network and stays accountable because every operator is a named, identifiable institution.”