Swift’s announcement this week of its Ethereum-compatible blockchain garnered attention, but a quieter initiative on digital asset standards may prove more transformative. For those who watched the proof of concept demonstration at the Sibos conference, the comprehensive approach to standardization could represent a breakthrough for institutional adoption.
The momentum in institutional digital assets was clearly on display at Sibos. Yet the sector’s biggest challenge remains: blockchain proliferation creates fragmentation that undermines liquidity. Swift’s standards initiative addresses this by leveraging financial instrument standards into a modular approach that supports assets issued across multiple blockchains. The framework also embraces public blockchain standards such as ERC-20 and ERC-3643, creating an unusually comprehensive end-to-end technical solution that spans multi blockchain deployment.
However, the perennial debate over whether standards inhibit innovation surfaced during Sibos panel discussions. While some panelists argued that standards are essential for making digital assets ready for institutional adoption, Ian De Bode from web3 asset manager Ondo Finance pushed back.
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