JPMorgan’s Onyx to industrialize blockchain PoCs from Project Guardian

Wall Street giants are looking at how to industrialize proofs-of-concept developed within the blockchain experiment Project Guardian. 

According to Stephanie Lok, product manager of JPMorgan’s blockchain platform Onyx, one of the company’s “very big focus area” is turning the learnings of the pilot program with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) into products. Lok shared these details during the TokenizeThis event in Miami on May 10:

“We want to see how we can take it forward. Investment fund tokenization is where we’re really focusing a lot of our time. [...] That’s a very big focus area: how can we kind of productionize, industrialize what we built out as a proof-of-concept?”

Another traditional firm “really focusing on the blockchain-enabled finance migration” is the asset manager WisdomTree. Speaking at the event, Maredith Hannon, head of business development for WisdomTree, said the company is targeting portfolio personalization in addition to blending portfolios with checking accounts.

“Think about if you could do 10,001 different variations of different types of allocations, different types of risk profiles,” said Hannon about the potential benefits of real-world asset tokenization for investors’ portfolios.

TokenizeThis 2024. Source: Sam Bourgi/Cointelegraph

Also tied to tokenization, WisdomTree is exploring how to offer different on-chain services under the same interface for its clients. According to Hannon, the bank is working on an application that will integrate a range of financial services, including tokenized portfolios and regular banking services. Hannon noted:

“It’s just enabling those to be on-chain. Deliver that end value of being able to use your money more effectively. Being able to be in the market, in a money market fund earning 5% versus earning pretty much nothing in your checking account. That’s really the ethos that we’re going after here. And we think that from a distribution perspective, that’s a huge need in the market and a problem to solve.”

WisdomTree is one of the asset managers behind Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF). 

The Project Guardian is an initiative that explores the feasibility of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and asset tokenization in wholesale funding markets. Launched in May 2022, its primary focus is on developing open and interoperable networks, institutional-grade DeFi protocols, asset tokenization, and trusted infrastructure.

Project Guardian’s main participants include JPMorgan, DBS Bank, SBI Digital Asset Holdings, and WisdomTree.