Yesterday during Hong Kong FinTech Week, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov joined King Leung, Head of Financial Services and Fintech at InvestHK, for a fireside chat exploring how Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) can unlock the full potential of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) by connecting private bank chains and public blockchains into the world’s largest global liquidity layer.
In an interview with Nasdaq TradeTalks’ Jill Malandrino during last month’s SmartCon in Barcelona, Leung highlighted CCIP as a “major infrastructure breakthrough” that’s integral to establishing Hong Kong as a web3 hub. In particular, he pointed to the tokenization of RWAs as the “catalyst to help uplift and elevate and transform” Hong Kong’s financial services sector.
“Obviously, this is so exciting that it got us to go to Barcelona in the first place to meet you in person,” Leung told Nazarov.
Leung emphasized CCIP as key infrastructure for maximizing liquidity in the web3 era. “It’s not hard to envision that in the future, where the underlying infrastructure is about blockchain, then I think we cannot afford to have digital islands.”
In August, global financial messaging services provider Swift successfully demonstrated how over 11,500 global financial institutions using Swift’s private key infrastructure can transact with multiple blockchains through a single integration with CCIP.
Nazarov distilled CCIP’s significance in a world where each bank creates its own private blockchain. “It is important for banks, anybody creating real-world assets, frankly anybody involved in the business of creating financial products and assets onto their own chain to have access to other chains,” he explained.
ANZ, one of Australia’s largest institutional banks, is already utilizing CCIP to power cross-chain, cross-currency real-world assets such as reef credits that incentivize agricultural efforts to protect the Great Barrier Reef.
Beyond allowing banks to create and sell assets cross-chain, CCIP transmits cross-chain messaging that programmatically affects the outcome of RWAs on their destination chain.
“This is very, very valuable,” Nazarov explained, because it allows banks and asset managers “to interact with huge amounts of chains without the integration burden of having to connect directly to them or integrate with them.”
Recalling his reaction to the success of Swift’s CCIP proof of concept, Leung said, “When I heard it, I was like, ‘Wow, somebody actually did it.’”
This week, Hong Kong-based financial services institution Arta TechFin announced its collaboration with Chainlink Labs to help bring cross-chain interoperability and transparency to its fund tokens using CCIP and Proof of Reserve.
“I think they and a few other players that are well-capitalized and willing to make a technical investment in making advanced financial products will begin to launch some of the more advanced, cooler things that will show people what’s possible in the capital markets,” Nazarov said.
Leung concluded the conversation by reflecting on the Chainlink community’s exceptional enthusiasm at SmartCon.
“It’s very rare that I’ve seen a speaker that would get a standing ovation in our industry,” he said. “But then when I was in Barcelona at Sergey’s conference, numerous times when Sergey makes announcements or is sharing the breakthrough technologies that his team has delivered to the community – I’m serious, there were people standing up, clapping, and just so emotional, sometimes with tears in their eyes.”
Watch Sergey Nazarov and King Leung’s fireside chat at Hong Kong FinTech Week.