In the second phase of the pilot project by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), ANZ, Visa, Fidelity International, and China AMC (Hong Kong) have jointly launched two innovative experiments to explore cross-chain settlement mechanisms for tokenized assets. The core of the experiment is to break down the compliance barriers between private banking chains and the Ethereum public chain.
In the first experiment, Australian investors deposit Australian dollars and receive the Australian dollar stablecoin (A$DC) issued by ANZ, which they then exchange for a wrapped virtual Hong Kong dollar (e-HKD) to purchase tokenized shares of Fidelity's money market fund (MMF). The second experiment, conducted in collaboration with ANZ, Visa, and China AMC, replaces e-HKD with tokenized Hong Kong dollar deposits, utilizing Visa's Tokenized Asset Platform (VTAP) to issue compliant tokens based on the ERC-3643 standard, embedding regulatory rules such as wallet whitelisting and transaction frequency limits into smart contracts.
Both experiments employ a “Delivery versus Payment” (DvP) mechanism, ensuring that funds and assets are synchronized in a single atomic transaction. This means that if the payment fails, the asset delivery is automatically canceled, completely eliminating counterparty risk caused by system asynchrony in traditional settlements.
The key breakthrough comes from the involvement of Chainlink's CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol). The DASChain operated by ANZ is a private permissioned chain that uses a ZK Validium architecture, while the fund contracts of Fidelity and China AMC are deployed on the Ethereum Sepolia testnet. CCIP builds a secure bridge between the two, verifying cross-chain identity credentials (CCID) in real-time, and only triggering the issuance of fund units on the target chain after confirming the investor's wallet permissions.
Furthermore, Fidelity's Digital Transfer Agent (DTA) smart contract can automatically read the on-chain fund net asset value (NAV) and instantly issue corresponding shares upon confirming cross-chain payments, eliminating the need for manual reconciliation. Fernando Vazquez, President of Capital Markets at Chainlink Labs, pointed out that this pilot demonstrates Chainlink's ability to achieve seamless collaboration between public and private chains within the existing regulatory framework, advancing the automation and compliance of financial infrastructure.
Atomic settlement not only enhances efficiency but also reshapes the trust model in cross-border finance. In traditional models, funds and assets belong to different clearing systems, with long-standing risks of delays and failures; however, this experiment achieves a first-time unification of regulatory compliance and technical efficiency through on-chain atomic transactions, laying a crucial foundation for the future circulation of global tokenized assets.