As headlines spotlight spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows and institutions revealing their exposure to BTC ETFs, financial service infrastructure providers are quietly integrating blockchain technology into their systems.
According to a recent report from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the firm conducted a pilot program named Smart NAV in collaboration with Chainlink (LINK). This initiative aimed to extend the capabilities of DTCC’s Mutual Fund Profile Service I (MFPS I), the industry standard for transmitting ‘Price and Rate’ data, also known as ‘NAV data.’
DTCC’s Mutual Fund Services business currently operates MFPS I, offering fund companies an automated solution to deliver prices and daily distribution rates to numerous clients for tens of thousands of mutual fund securities. Traditionally, DTCC collects price and rate data from funds/service providers and distributors, then aggregates and disseminates it at regular intervals through its message queue (MQ) and file-based methods.
The Smart NAV Pilot served as a digital extension of the existing MFPS I service, aiming to broaden and complement its current capabilities. DTCC recognized the growing interest in mutual fund tokenization and saw an opportunity for on-chain price and rate data to facilitate new initiatives. Taking a ‘chain-agnostic’ approach, meaning the ability to disseminate NAV data across virtually any blockchain, was crucial for enabling other use cases to build upon Smart NAV’s foundations.
Ten market participants, including major names like American Century Investments, BNY Mellon, and JP Morgan, collaborated with DTCC and Chainlink on the pilot. They evaluated the feasibility and industry value of implementing a distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based price and rate dissemination solution to unlock new benefits and support experimentation in the asset management space.
The pilot results demonstrated that delivering structured data on-chain and establishing standard roles and processes enabled foundational data to be integrated into various on-chain use cases, such as tokenized funds and bulk consumer smart contracts. This capability can fuel future industry exploration and empower numerous downstream use cases, including brokerage portfolio applications.
The simplest application of Smart NAV is to provide trusted, verifiable data on virtually any blockchain network to support its use in business workflows. During the pilot, DTCC acted as both the provider and governor of the on-chain data solution, while Chainlink’s CCIP served as the interoperability layer. The core capability explored is adaptable across a wide range of use cases, potentially enhancing operational efficiency and streamlining processes.
Based on the positive findings, DTCC sees an opportunity to expand the scope of the pilot to explore broader use cases beyond price and rate data dissemination and across more blockchains.
Source: kitco.com
