On Sept. 30, Chainlink Labs announced that it was officially partnering with ANZ, a leading Australian bank with over $750 billion (more than a trillion AUD) in assets under management.

The partnership is part of the Singaporean central bank’s (Monetary Authority of Singapore) Project Guardian.

Chainlink will help enable the secure cross-chain exchange of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) via its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).

.@ChainlinkLabs is officially partnering with ANZ—a leading Australian bank with over A$1 trillion in AUM—in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian.#Chainlink CCIP will help enable the secure cross-chain exchange of tokenized RWAs. https://t.co/nlXJPJKjDv

— Chainlink (@chainlink) September 30, 2024

Chainlink Diving Deeper into RWA

ANZ announced the joining of the MAS project “to explore broader access to tokenized real-world assets in financial markets” and interoperability between private blockchains.

ANZ Singapore head, Mark Evans, said that MAS is a global leader in its commitment to digitizing the financial system through industry collaboration before adding:

“We’re pleased to join Project Guardian and play a role in fast-tracking the development of a stable, secure digital asset ecosystem, which will be essential to meeting the future needs of our customers across the region.”

ANZ Banking Services Lead Nigel Dobson noted that tokenized asset markets are “highly fragmented,” with assets and related services spanning different blockchains that are not natively interoperable.

“This can limit the adoption of tokenized assets while making the integration process for financial institutions complex,” he added.

He also mentioned that the collaboration would help the bank demonstrate its emerging digital assets capabilities such as A$DC, an Australian dollar stablecoin first minted in March 2022.

Project Guardian was launched by the MAS in May 2022 to explore the potential of DeFi within the financial sector. The initiative has since expanded to include real-world asset tokenization.

There is currently $12.7 billion worth of RWA tokenized on-chain, according to rwa.xyz, with private credit the lion’s share at $9 billion. Moreover, RWA tokenization has seen a 53% growth since the beginning of this year.

LINK Price Reaction

Chainlink’s native token, LINK, did not react to the ANZ partnership announcement. The asset has shed 1.4% on the day, falling to $12.13 at the time of writing.

Like most altcoins, the asset has been hit hard for the past six months, dropping almost 50% from its high of almost $22 earlier this year.

Despite a number of high-profile partnerships and continual protocol development, LINK prices remain down 77% from their all-time high of $52.70 in May 2021.