The Canton Foundation and Meritz Securities have signed an MoU to explore institutional asset tokenisation in South Korea and cross-border uses.
The Canton Foundation and South Korea-based Meritz Securities have signed a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to advance institutional asset tokenisation in South Korea and explore cross-border digital asset applications using the Canton Network. The two organisations plan to widen the scope of their collaboration step by step as South Korea’s regulatory frameworks for digital assets allow. The agreement combines Meritz Securities’ capital markets expertise and its preparations for South Korea’s evolving security token offering (STO) regulatory environment with Canton’s ecosystem of financial institutions, market infrastructure providers, and digital asset venues.
Three areas of collaboration
The partnership will initially focus on domestic financial asset tokenisation, with the two organisations exploring, within applicable regulatory frameworks, how traditional domestic financial assets could be tokenised and preparing business models aligned with South Korea’s evolving rules. They will also assess bringing the Canton Network’s privacy-enabled infrastructure into the Korean capital market, including its use to mobilise tokenised assets as institutional collateral.
The third area involves cross-border activity. Together with global institutional partners, the two organisations will explore a cross-border asset tokenisation initiative that could use the Canton Network for tokenised sovereign-grade debt assets. The initiative aims to examine institutional use cases for tokenised high-quality liquid assets, including their use as collateral, supporting capital mobility across global execution and clearing ecosystems and improving liquidity across trading venues on the network.
Canton Network and regulatory approach
The Canton Network was developed by US-based blockchain company Digital Asset and operates as an institutional public blockchain with sub-transaction privacy protection. More than 1,000 institutions participate in its wider ecosystem, and 62 organisations operate as Super Validators on the Canton Foundation’s Global Synchronizer. The Canton Foundation is an independent, non-profit organisation responsible for the governance and long-term development of the network’s shared infrastructure.
Byungha Kang, Managing Director of the Strategic Planning Unit at Meritz Securities, stated that the collaboration lays the groundwork for exploring how South Korea’s capital markets can be linked with global digital asset infrastructure, adding that the company will take a step-by-step approach as the regulatory framework develops. Viv Diwakar, Head of the Canton Foundation, stated that institutional adoption of digital assets depends on collaboration with financial institutions that have capital markets expertise. According to Diwakar, Meritz Securities’ experience in institutional financing and structured products positions it to explore tokenisation and collateral mobility in South Korea. As an MoU, the agreement remains exploratory, with its scope tied to the pace of regulatory change in the country.
