J.P. Morgan’s Onyx Digital Assets team led development of a proof-of-concept (POC) system in collaboration with Apollo, with the goal of enabling fund managers to tokenize funds onto their chosen blockchain, and to enable wealth managers to purchase and rebalance positions in tokenized assets across multiple, interconnected blockchains. The POC standardizes processes to settle transactions on interoperable blockchains.

Within the POC, Onyx Digital Assets leveraged the Axelar network to enable interoperability with a private and permissioned Provenance Blockchain Zone. Oasis Pro enabled the tokenization of assets, such as Apollo funds, on the Provenance Blockchain Zone.

“Our goal is to create solutions that bring significant efficiencies and enable better outcomes for Asset & Wealth Managers and investors through personalized, highly scalable portfolios, regardless of asset class or where those assets are managed and recorded,” said Tyrone Lobban, head of Onyx Digital Assets. “The interoperability achieved through Project Guardian is a step forward in showing how tokenized traditional and alternative investments can be automatically managed across multiple systems.”

The POC, detailed in a report published this week at the Singapore FinTech Festival, is the latest step forward by J.P. Morgan’s Onyx Digital Assets and Apollo in advancing blockchain finance. In October, Onyx Digital Assets executed a groundbreaking on-chain transaction to convert money-market shares into digital collateral for transfer between counterparties in an over-the-counter derivatives trade. Last year, Apollo launched a digitally native investment vehicle to demonstrate how blockchain technology could support on-chain fund subscriptions, ongoing fund operations and fund administration for private funds.

Provenance Blockchain, meanwhile, has supported over $16B in transactions, and currently has $9B in real-world financial asset value locked on-chain, including funds, loans and private equity. Purpose-built for financial services, Provenance Blockchain is in use with more than 70 financial institutions and has played a key role in several financial-services firsts, including the first blockchain-native consumer loans, first asset-backed securitization on blockchain and the first bank-minted tokenized deposits in the United States.

“J.P. Morgan and Apollo’s use case is exactly why we designed interoperable private and permissioned Provenance Blockchain Zones,” shared Anthony Moro, Provenance Blockchain CEO. “With the support of Axelar and Oasis Pro, J.P. Morgan and Apollo demonstrated how portfolios could be rebalanced and trades executed between Onyx Digital Assets and Provenance Blockchain. This is believed to be a first-of-its-kind blockchain interoperability solution for institutional financial services.”

“Successfully delivering the solutions for portfolio rebalancing is a critical step in the evolution of traditional asset-management functions. This next generation of technology will increase speed and efficiency across legacy systems. Oasis Pro is extremely proud of our work with these amazing companies in this groundbreaking partnership,” said Pat LaVecchia, CEO of Oasis Pro.

Axelar network connects 50+ chains over a decentralized cross-chain network that provides decentralized security and permissionless programmability. Increasingly, large enterprises are looking to Axelar network to integrate off-chain systems with on-chain networks, as well. For this POC, Axelar Inc. helped deploy private instances of the Axelar blockchain to meet requirements.

“For Axelar network, interoperability doesn’t stop at the borders of any blockchain,” said Sergey Gorbunov, CEO of Axelar Inc. “Public blockchains provide fast finality and transparency, and these attributes can be difference-makers in hybrid systems that integrate real-world assets (RWAs) as well as private blockchains and off-chain systems. Axelar network connects all with robust security and programmability that automates away developer overhead and delivers world-class user experience.”