From the perspective of a digital infrastructure provider, how would you describe the current state of the securities lending market? What trends are you seeing here?
The securities lending market is going through a structural shift: from debating whether to tokenise, to figuring out how to make tokenisation work across an entire organisation.
The practical challenge is connectivity. When a bank wants to mobilise tokenised collateral today, it might hold cash on one blockchain, securities on another, and run a margin engine that talks to neither. Its counterparty uses a different custodian, different chains, and different systems entirely. Multiply that across dozens of use cases and hundreds of counterparties, and you have an integration problem that makes tokenisation economically unviable.
We are seeing three patterns crystallise.
First, the multi-everything problem. Different institutions have chosen different blockchains for legitimate reasons. That fragmentation is not going to resolve itself. The question is how to operate across all of it without building custom integrations for every combination.
Second, real production deployments are accelerating. The EU, UK, and now the US global digital finance (GDF) collateral mobility industry sandbox grew from zero to more than 80 institutions in a matter of weeks — not because tokenisation is new, but because participants finally have a way to connect without years of bilateral integration work. Several are now moving directly to production.
Third, the economics have become difficult to ignore. One major bank calculated US$100 million in annual savings just from intraday repo alone — paying interest by the minute instead of by the day. When you can borrow US$100 million for three hours and pay only for three hours, the capital efficiency case is transformative.
The broader shift is from tokenisation as a technology project to tokenisation as operational infrastructure. That means solving not just blockchain connectivity, but legacy integration, partner connectivity, and application coordination simultaneously.
Can you take us through Ownera’s journey since it began developing the FinP2P router in 2021? Where are you now and where are you heading?
We started with a straightforward observation: every bank was building blockchain integrations in silos. The trading desk connected to one chain, the collateral team to another, treasury to a third — each integration taking 18 months. Multiply that across every counterparty, and it does not scale.
The insight was that institutions do not need help deploying a single blockchain use case. They need infrastructure that lets them deploy all of them without rebuilding everything each time. So we built routers that sit inside each institution and handle three types of connectivity simultaneously.
Network connectivity covers legacy systems and primary blockchains natively, with access to additional chains through custodians and cross-chain protocols. Partner connectivity means you connect once to the router network and can connect with any other connected institution — minimal bilateral integrations.
Application connectivity means each new use case — repo, collateral, trading — reuses the same definitions of users, assets, and counterparties.
Validation came quickly. J.P. Morgan and HQLAX went live in summer 2025 with intraday repo: production trades settling by the minute. The GDF collateral industry sandbox in Europe then demonstrated that dozens of institutions could connect in months. The subsequent US expansion has drawn virtually every major institution, with many looking to move straight into production.
Today we are processing billions in transaction volume across production deployments. But the more important development is that institutions are not stopping at one use case. They are layering multiple applications on the same infrastructure — intraday repo, collateral mobility, central securities depository (CSD) connectivity — and that compounding effect is what makes the economics work.
The next phase is about making tokenisation as easy to deploy as any other enterprise application. Connect your router, choose applications from the Ownera SuperApps platform or build your own, define your counterparties, and go live.
What differentiates Ownera and its approach from other fintechs in the industry?
We solve the problem nobody particularly wants to talk about: how do you operate tokenised markets at scale without your technology organisation spending the next decade on custom integrations?
Most blockchain solutions focus on one dimension — one application on a blockchain with specific partners. That is fine for a point solution. But institutions need to run dozens of business use cases across hundreds of counterparties.
The real scaling challenge is n × n × n complexity: multiple chains + legacy, multiplied by multiple partners, multiplied by multiple business applications.
A concrete example: in the GDF project, we connected banks using different chains (Canton, Ethereum, Polygon, Hedera), different custody models (traditional custodians, digital platforms, omnibus accounts), different margin engines, and different money market fund issuers. A single collateral substitution might touch four blockchains and six systems.
We addressed that through three architectural choices:
1. Institution-controlled execution. Your router runs in your infrastructure. You control the compute, data, and decision-making. There is no external oracle network executing trades on your behalf. For regulated institutions, this matters enormously — your risk, legal, and compliance teams all understand exactly where accountability sits.
2. Intent-based abstraction. Instead of coding instructions to move specific tokens on a specific chain via a specific smart contract, you define business intent: ‘post eligible collateral to counterparty X.’ The router determines which chains, assets, and custody model to use. This means supporting new chains and assets without rewriting application logic.
3. Native integration with primary blockchains. For example, if Canton is your strategic platform for institutional markets, we connect natively — your digital asset markup language (DAML) applications run directly on your Canton node. The router extends Canton’s reach to legacy systems and other chains without forcing everything through an intermediary layer. The result is that institutions can go from “we want to do tokenised repo” to live production in months, and when they want to add collateral mobility, trading, or CSD connectivity, those layer onto the same infrastructure.
In August 2025, Ownera launched a cross-ledger repo solution with J.P. Morgan and HQLAX. Almost six months on, what notable developments have there been with this solution? What are you hearing from clients?
The intraday repo deployment demonstrated something important: tokenisation does not just make existing processes faster — it enables entirely new products.
Traditional repo is effectively overnight-or-nothing. If you need US$100 million for 3 hours, you borrow it for 24 and pay for 24. Minute-level settlement changes that equation fundamentally. For large institutions managing billions in intraday liquidity, the savings are substantial.
In practice, we are seeing three developments in production. Institutions are calibrating funding to actual need — borrowing at 10:15, returning at 13:47 — turning repo into a precision operational tool, rather than a blunt overnight instrument. Capital efficiency is improving as liquidity coverage ratio (LCR) and net stable funding ratio (NSFR) liquidity buffers can shrink when on-demand precision liquidity is available, freeing trapped capital. And the infrastructure built for repo — instant settlement, multi-chain coordination, custody integration — is proving directly reusable for collateral mobility, trading, and payments.
Client conversations have shifted from ‘does this work?’ to operational planning: how to connect margin engines, how to extend coverage to Asian entities, how to add derivatives collateral on the same platform.
The expansion throughout 2026 is proceeding across three dimensions: more trading platforms, more forms of digital cash — from stablecoins to deposit tokens to central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) — and broader geographic coverage.
In recent developments, Ownera collaborated with LayerZero to enable cross-chain solutions for institutional tokenisation. Can you explore the significance of this move and of the firm’s SuperApps platform — what is a SuperApp?
The LayerZero collaboration addresses a practical architectural question: institutions need access to liquidity across more than 160 blockchains, but they should not have to integrate with 160 different cross-chain protocols.
LayerZero provides omnichain interoperability — they have secured over US$200 billion in value and connect virtually every major blockchain. We integrated their protocol through two SuperApps that give institutions access to that entire ecosystem through a single integration point.
But that was just the beginning — LayerZero has now launched Zero, a high throughput blockchain capable of 2m+ transactions per second per zone, which finally opens high throughput markets for blockchain implementation. This is a major milestone for the industry, and a seamless integration into Ownera routers.
About the SuperApp model:
Traditionally, every vendor application an institution deploys requires separate onboarding, separate asset definitions, separate user management. You want repo from one vendor, collateral management from another, trading from a third — that is three separate integration projects.
A SuperApp inherits shared definitions from the platform level: users and permissions, assets and custody arrangements, counterparties and relationships, and blockchain connectivity — all defined once and available to every application. When ZeroBeta recently launc hed three SuperApps (portfolio management, secured financing, and staking), institutions did not need three integrations. They got three composable applications that work together and share the same institutional network automatically.
This matters because no institution can build every application it needs internally. Specialised tools for compliance, risk analytics, exotic derivatives, private markets, or cross-border payments can plug into the router and immediately work with an institution’s existing setup.
The LayerZero SuperApps specifically resolve the ‘which cross-chain protocol?’ question. Instead of committing to one protocol and being limited to its supported chains, institutions access LayerZero’s full ecosystem through a controlled interface. If a counterparty needs an asset on an unfamiliar chain that LayerZero supports, it just works.
This is how tokenisation scales beyond pilots: shared infrastructure that multiple applications build on, rather than each requiring its own bespoke integration.
Looking forward, what will be top of mind for you over the next 12 months?
Execution. Three specific priorities:
First, transitioning sandbox participants to production. The GDF collateral mobility working group has validated the technology with more than 80 institutions. Many are ready to go live as soon as the legal and regulatory work, which is being done in parallel, is completed in the coming months. Our job is to make that transition as straightforward as deploying any enterprise application — clear business models for all participants, proven operational support, and simple legal structures between market players.
Second, ecosystem expansion. The SuperApps platform currently offers applications for repo, collateral, trading, payments, and CSD connectivity. We are working with partners to add compliance tools, risk analytics, reporting platforms, and specialised applications for private markets. The goal is that when an institution needs tokenised capability, there are multiple production-ready SuperApps available.
Third, demonstrating compounding value. The economic case for tokenisation strengthens as use cases layer on each other. An institution running intraday repo can add collateral mobility on the same infrastructure at minimal additional cost, then trading, then CSD connectivity. Each application increases the platform’s value.
What makes this moment distinctive is convergence. Institutions are past the ‘wait and see’ phase. Regulatory frameworks are clarifying — the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC’s) December 2025 approval of tokenised collateral was a watershed moment. Production infrastructure exists and is processing real volume. And the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation’s (DTCC’s) deployment timeline is creating industry-wide urgency.
The technology is proven. The economics are compelling. The regulatory environment is supportive. The next 12 months are about converting institutional intent into live production — and making tokenised markets as reliable and accessible as their traditional counterparts, with all the advantages digital infrastructure provides.
2026 is the year of critical-mass buildup and deployment of scalable tokenised market capabilities across the financial industry.
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USS Investment Management Limited
Playing the long game
Image: Ami Ben-David 
