Project Guardian is MAS's flagship tokenisation initiative. Learn what the pilots proved, how they work, and what they mean for digital asset businesses in Singapore.

In May 2022, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) launched Project Guardian — a structured, multi-year programme to test whether tokenised financial assets can function within existing regulatory and market infrastructure at institutional scale.

It was not a research exercise. From the first pilot onward, real trades were executed, real institutions participated, and real settlement infrastructure was tested. By mid-2025, the programme had grown to involve more than 40 financial institutions, global industry associations, and international policymakers across seven jurisdictions.

For founders, compliance officers, and investors operating in the digital asset space, Project Guardian matters for a specific reason: it defines how Singapore’s regulator thinks about tokenised markets, and that thinking directly shapes the licensing and compliance environment for any firm seeking to operate here.

This article explains what Project Guardian is, what its pilots have demonstrated, how the Global Layer One infrastructure initiative fits in, and what the programme means in practical terms for digital asset businesses considering Singapore.

What Is Project Guardian?

Project Guardian is a collaborative initiative between MAS and the financial industry that seeks to explore the economic potential and value-adding use cases of asset tokenisation. It was not conceived as a theoretical study. From the outset, MAS structured it around live industry pilots — actual transactions conducted on blockchain infrastructure by regulated financial institutions operating within existing supervisory frameworks.

Tokenisation is the process of digitally representing assets or items of value through a smart contract on a blockchain, which allows high-value financial and real-economy assets to be fractionalised and exchanged over the internet on a peer-to-peer basis. Project Guardian tests whether this can be done reliably, efficiently, and within a compliance-grade environment.

The developments under Project Guardian aim to catalyse the institutional adoption of digital assets, with the aim of freeing up liquidity, unlocking investment opportunities, and increasing the efficiency of financial markets. That framing is significant. MAS is not treating tokenisation as a fintech novelty — it is treating it as an infrastructure question for capital markets.

How the Pilots Are Structured

Project Guardian is set up as a collaborative initiative between policymakers and financial institutions to enhance liquidity and efficiency of financial markets through asset tokenisation, delivered via several different industry groups. Each industry group focuses on a specific asset class or market function, and participants run pilots within that group’s scope.

Pilots are carried out with financial institutions and fintechs in Singapore and other jurisdictions, to develop good asset tokenisation use cases for financial services. Such pilots allow the industry to identify opportunities to unlock economic value, and surface potential risk management issues. The structure is deliberate: test in a safe environment, document what works, publish frameworks, and then move toward commercialisation.

MAS has, under Project Guardian, convened over 40 financial institutions, industry associations, and international policymakers across seven jurisdictions to carry out industry trials on the use of asset tokenisation in capital markets. Participants include global banks, custodians, asset managers, and market infrastructure providers — not startups.

Key Pilot Workstreams and Results

Project Guardian has produced results across three primary workstreams: fixed income, foreign exchange, and asset and wealth management. Each has moved from proof of concept to commercially demonstrable outcomes.

Fixed Income

Standard Chartered Bank led an initiative to explore the issuance of tokens linked to trade finance assets. The project aimed to digitise the trade distribution market by transforming trade assets into transferable instruments that are more transparent and accessible to investors. Later pilots under this workstream went further, connecting regulated digital asset exchanges to create liquidity for tokenised asset-backed securities.

Foreign Exchange

Under the first industry pilot, DBS Bank, JP Morgan, and SBI Digital Asset Holdings conducted foreign exchange and government bond transactions against liquidity pools comprising tokenised Singapore Government Securities Bonds and Japanese government bonds. This was the first live Project Guardian trade involving tokenised deposits and government-bond liquidity pools. The government-securities leg was a simulated exercise.

The FX workstream has continued to develop. Solutions introduced include Treasury Tokens for intra-company FX transactions and tokenised bonds on DBS Digital Exchange. These are not hypothetical products — they reflect operational implementations by institutions with live client exposure.

Asset and Wealth Management

In an MAS-supported pilot under Project Guardian, UBS Asset Management, State Street, and InvestaX participated in the issuance of a blockchain-native VCC fund using both public and private blockchain protocols. The Variable Capital Company (VCC) structure is a Singapore-specific legal vehicle, and its use in tokenised fund issuance signals that MAS has worked to align legal infrastructure with technological capability.

A pilot led by Swift, UBS Asset Management, and blockchain platform Chainlink showcased how tokenised assets and blockchain technology can be bridged with traditional fiat-based payment systems to ensure secure, cross-border transactions between investors, fund managers, and financial institutions. Automating the fund redemption and subscription lifecycle could potentially overcome a number of legacy barriers faced by traditional fund operations, including manual interventions and delayed settlements.

By late 2024, MAS had moved from isolated pilots toward commercialisation, including live implementations by participating institutions and industry groups such as the Guardian Wholesale Network.

Global Layer One: The Infrastructure Layer

Project Guardian’s pilots exposed a structural challenge: institutions testing tokenisation on separate, incompatible networks would create liquidity fragmentation at scale. MAS responded by launching the Global Layer One initiative, known as GL1.

The GL1 initiative aims to foster the development of a shared layer infrastructure for hosting tokenised financial assets and financial applications along the financial value chain. It addresses the infrastructure problem that individual pilots cannot solve alone.

Under the GL1 initiative, MAS is collaborating with international policymakers and financial institutions including BNY, Citi, J.P. Morgan, MUFG Bank, and Societe Generale-FORGE on the business, governance, risk, legal, and technology considerations of a shared ledger infrastructure.International policymakers observing the GL1 initiative include staff from the European Central Bank, Banque de France, and the International Monetary Fund.

The scope of GL1 goes beyond technical interoperability. GL1 will provide standardised governance, develop technical specifications, and embed compliance by design for enhanced regulatory alignment and risk management. The project introduces programmable compliance — a feature that automates regulatory checks, ensuring secure and efficient transactions across global markets.

In the next phase, GL1 would explore the establishment of a non-profit organisation to develop common principles, policies, and standards for operating a global shared ledger infrastructure. This would complement the potential future establishment of independent operating companies that would build and deploy the GL1 infrastructure.

Industry Frameworks Published Under Project Guardian

Beyond pilot results, Project Guardian has produced a set of published frameworks that define how tokenised markets should operate. These documents are non-binding but carry significant weight because they reflect regulator-endorsed standards.

MAS has introduced two industry frameworks to support tokenisation: the Guardian Fixed Income Framework (GFIF), which sets standards for tokenising debt instruments, and the Guardian Funds Framework (GFF), which provides best practices for tokenised investment vehicles.

The GFIF introduces an initial set of non-prescriptive standards and industry best practices for tokenised fixed income assets to enable the adoption of asset tokenisation for fixed income products within financial markets. The non-prescriptive character is intentional — MAS is setting direction without mandating specific technical solutions.

These frameworks matter to businesses planning tokenised product structures. A firm building a tokenised fund or issuing tokenised fixed income instruments will be expected to demonstrate alignment with these standards as part of any MAS regulatory engagement.

The Broader Regulatory Context in Singapore

Project Guardian sits within a wider regulatory ecosystem that MAS has been building in parallel. Understanding both layers is necessary for any firm considering Singapore as a base for digital asset activity.

On the licensing side, firms engaging in Digital Payment Token (DPT) services must be licensed under the Payment Services Act 2019 (PSA), and as of June 30, 2025, entities incorporated in Singapore that offer digital token services to clients outside the country must hold a DTSP licence under the Financial Services and Markets Act 2022 (FSMA).

DPT service providers are required to develop appropriate compliance management arrangements, including appointing an AML/CFT compliance officer at the management level. They must maintain an adequately resourced and independent audit function to regularly assess the effectiveness of their internal policies, procedures, controls, and compliance with regulatory requirements.

The connection between Project Guardian and the licensing regime is direct. MAS is simultaneously testing what tokenised markets can do and tightening the rules that govern who can participate in them. A firm seeking a Crypto or VASP licence in Singapore cannot treat these as separate questions — the compliance posture MAS expects is informed by the frameworks Project Guardian is producing.

Firms planning to offer tokenised products across borders also need to engage with AML and compliance infrastructure early. The GL1 initiative’s emphasis on programmable compliance signals that MAS will increasingly expect compliance capabilities to be embedded at the product level, not just applied as an overlay.

What Project Guardian Means for Digital Asset Businesses

Project Guardian is not directly relevant to all digital asset firms. Its pilots focus on institutional wholesale markets — tokenised bonds, fund shares, FX instruments, and government securities. It does not address retail cryptocurrency exchange, NFT platforms, or consumer-facing DPT services in any direct way.

However, the programme has implications that extend beyond its direct participants:

• Regulatory tone: MAS has consistently treated digital assets as a financial markets infrastructure question, not a consumer tech question. Firms that approach MAS engagement with that same framing will find a more receptive regulator.
• Licensing expectations: As Project Guardian frameworks mature, MAS will likely incorporate their standards into licensing requirements for entities seeking to operate in tokenised asset markets. Early alignment with GFIF and GFF reduces future compliance burden.
• Cross-border ambitions: Variances in global regulatory frameworks hinder seamless cross-border tokenised asset distribution. Any firm planning cross-border tokenised product distribution needs a multi-jurisdiction licensing strategy from the outset — not as an afterthought.
• Banking and settlement infrastructure:Project Guardian’s efforts have resulted in a number of live use cases, demonstrating how asset tokenisation can be integrated with existing market infrastructure. The live implementations offer tangible evidence of commercial viability, operational resilience, and alignment with regulatory requirements. Firms planning tokenised product launches should assess whether their banking and settlement infrastructure is compatible with this evolving landscape.

For firms evaluating Singapore as a jurisdiction for digital asset operations, the combination of a mature licensing framework and the world’s most documented institutional tokenisation programme creates a distinct positioning advantage — provided the firm has the regulatory and compliance infrastructure to support it. A jurisdiction advisory engagement is often the most efficient way to assess whether Singapore’s requirements align with a firm’s operational model, or whether an alternative jurisdiction offers a more appropriate regulatory fit. Jurisdictions such as those across Asia, the EU, and the Gulf each carry different requirements for digital asset businesses, and the right choice depends on the product, the client base, and the operational structure.

Firms already operating under MAS supervision and looking to expand their digital asset product range — including tokenised funds, structured products, or cross-border settlement instruments — will need banking and payment infrastructure that meets MAS’s increasingly detailed operational expectations.

Conclusion

Project Guardian is one of the most structured institutional tokenisation programmes run by a major financial regulator. Its significance for digital asset businesses is not in the specific pilots themselves, but in what those pilots reveal: MAS is methodical, evidence-driven, and building toward a scalable tokenised markets infrastructure with compliance embedded by design.

From capital markets to fund structures to interbank settlement, recent developments indicate that tokenised finance is entering an institutional phase, with Singapore positioning itself as a reference point for how the model could scale.

For any firm considering Singapore for crypto or VASP licensing, tokenised product issuance, or digital asset fund management, understanding Project Guardian is not optional background reading. It reflects how MAS thinks, what it expects, and where the regulatory environment is heading. Engaging with that environment early — with proper licensing, compliance infrastructure, and corporate structure aligned to MAS expectations — puts a firm in a materially stronger position than reacting to requirements after the fact.