Wall Street's clearinghouse seeks 'high-performance' blockchains to tokenize corporate actions

The DTCC, which processes about $20 trillion in U.S. securities trades daily, is collaborating with high-performance layer-1 blockchains to move complex corporate actions like dividend payments and tender offers onto blockchain networks. The organization plans to begin testing its tokenized securities platform in July with a broader rollout in October, though CEO Frank La Salla acknowledged significant challenges including scalability issues, liquidity fragmentation, and the loss of netting efficiencies. La Salla identified tokenized collateral and real-time dollar liquidity as blockchain's first major institutional use case, though he noted that current blockchain networks can take days to process corporate actions compared to the millions of dividend payments the DTCC handles daily.