The second episode of Chainlink’s “The Future Is On” spotlight series features Euroclear’s Group Head of Innovation and Digital Assets, Jorgen Ouaknine, and Head of Digital Assets Competence Center, Stephanie Lheureux, who highlighted Euroclear’s digital asset strategy and the need for blockchain interoperability standards that bridge legacy finance with distributed ledger technology (DLT).
Euroclear was one of a dozen global banks and financial market infrastructures (FMIs) that participated in Swift’s proof of concept demonstrating how Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) allows traditional financial institutions to transact with a wide range of private and public blockchains using their existing infrastructure.
Because Euroclear is a major FMI custodying more than €36 trillion of assets, Ouaknine said it’s adopted a “safe and gradual innovation approach” to building an ecosystem where traditional and digital assets coexist.
“We’re sitting in the middle of market readiness, regulatory readiness, and technology maturity, and the combination of all these three elements is very important for us to accelerate and deliver new projects when it comes to DLT,” he said.
Lheureux described Euroclear’s MVP (minimum viable product) method of building an onchain bond issuance platform that’s interoperable with Euroclear’s legacy system.
“What we’re doing with this D-FMI platform is actually bringing together the best of both worlds,” added Ouaknine. He explained how Euroclear’s strategy of innovating at a pace that supports safe, efficient, sustainable economic growth informed the decision to pursue digital Euro bonds as an initial asset class.
“Our clients were very comfortable with that because they know it very well; it’s a very liquid asset and they can compare and see the benefits of it,” he said. “The beauty of this innovation is that you know we are making things progress but you are not feeling any pain. It’s actually business as usual, just in a better way.”
Minimizing the cost and inefficiencies of transferring financial data is a key advantage of DLT.
“This is something that DLT can bring value to right now – being able to get away from a sequential way of sharing data into something more circular,” Lheureux explained.
She underscored the importance of infrastructure that unites tokenization islands and seamlessly brings traditional banks onchain. “They already have a system which is working well,” she said. “We need to be able to leverage that and make them interoperate with the new world.”
Watch the second episode of “The Future Is On” featuring Euroclear’s Jorgen Ouaknine And Stephanie Lheureux.