This week at Sibos, Angie Walker, Chainlink Labs’ Global Head of Banking and Capital Markets, joined BMO’s Jonathan Hackett, ASIFMA’s Diana Parusheva, DBS Bank’s Ee Fong Soh, and China Central Depository & Clearing’s Jie Lin, to discuss green asset innovation with key technology such as AI and Chainlink’s essential tokenization infrastructure – Data Feeds, Proof of Reserve (PoR), and Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).
Walker shared several examples of Chainlink-powered tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) in the form of green financial products that can be updated and verified onchain to establish new standards for transparency and accountability regarding sustainability initiatives and mitigate corporate greenwashing.
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited (ANZ), one of the largest banks in the Asia-Pacific region with over 1.1 trillion AUD in assets, is currently utilizing CCIP to power tokenized reef credits – a financial incentive for farmers and land managers to protect the Great Barrier Reef by reducing nitrogen runoff – which can be purchased with A$DC, Australia’s first bank-issued, dollar-backed stablecoin.
“We facilitated a full delivery versus payment transaction for that reef credit on ledger, and we’re able to monitor the whole life cycle from the actual issuance of the reef credit all the way through to the investor,” Walker explained.
“We’re able to accommodate the biggest challenges around things like greenwashing, which is validating and verifying that the asset is what it says it is; it’s in the quantity and the quality that we expect it to be; and that the investors are investing in a true green instrument.”
Chainlink also works with Floodlight, which provides geospatial satellite imagery and carbon emissions data.
“They’re able to monitor with extreme accuracy the amount of carbon created by a shipment, from the point that it leaves the port all the way through to its final destination, and we’re able to monitor that and bring that data onchain using data oracles,” Walker explained.
“We’re collecting data through data oracles and using that to attest the carbon emissions and the offsetting of those carbon emissions onchain, so that’s a really groundbreaking and very interesting use of the technology.”
As the industry-standard decentralized computing platform, Chainlink has enabled over $16 trillion in transaction value across 19+ blockchain networks. Data Feeds, PoR, and CCIP provide the foundational data and cross-chain connectivity traditional financial institutions need to create, secure, and update RWAs, allowing them to function as unified golden records.
The ability to continuously monitor green instruments onchain is especially important for long-term assets. Walker highlighted the example of a corporate bond to refurbish an industrial site over five to ten years.
“Now in the past, that would all be done on paper. You’d have no proof in the existing world that they actually spent that money on the thing that you wanted to spend it on.”
In the future, a smart bond issued natively on the blockchain can integrate geospatial monitoring, data oracles, and onchain attestation to verify that the original debt is being used for the intended purpose.
“We’re able to monitor the carbon emissions of that site very accurately over the course of the life of the bond,” Walker said. This is critical for all ESG instruments, she explained, because “what started life as an ESG instrument could well become not an ESG instrument very quickly if you’re not monitoring its progression to ensure that it’s meeting its objectives.”
She distilled the ultimate goal of Chainlink-powered green financial products: “We’re trying to eliminate the sphere of greenwashing which has dogged the industry for the last five or ten years,” she explained.
“This ability to use technology to give people confidence that we can eliminate these challenges around the governance and the credibility of these instruments is really important. Because the buy side has an appetite to want to invest, to want to be able to use these assets. But we’ve got to show, as an industry, that they are what they say they are and they continue to be what they say they are throughout their life cycle.”
Watch the full panel discussion.