Asia’s monetary companies large DBS has launched its tokenized structured notes on the Ethereum community for accredited and institutional traders, marking a public-chain growth of the financial institution’s digital asset program.
The notes are issued on Ethereum and bought in smaller ($1,000) items than standard private-bank merchandise, focusing on distribution to eligible shoppers by way of licensed platforms.
The transfer follows DBS’s rollout of crypto-linked choices and structured notes for eligible shoppers in late 2024, which the financial institution mentioned would start within the fourth quarter of that 12 months.
These choices provided exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum by OTC choices and structured notes, increasing the toolset for threat administration and yield inside institutional mandates. Right this moment’s tokenized issuance takes that product line on-chain and shifts issuance and secondary logistics to Ethereum’s settlement rails.
DBS has run parallel experiments on permissioned infrastructure inside its transaction banking stack. In October 2024, the financial institution unveiled DBS Token Providers, an EVM-compatible permissioned blockchain built-in with its core funds engine to allow treasury tokens, conditional funds, and programmable rewards for establishments.
That suite was designed for real-time settlement and interoperability with current cost networks. By putting structured notes immediately on public Ethereum, DBS is extending issuance past a closed ledger whereas retaining an EVM toolset already utilized in its enterprise pilots.
The Singapore regulator has pushed trade pilots that map out requirements and controls for tokenized markets. The Financial Authority of Singapore’s Project Guardian has coordinated pilots throughout mounted revenue, FX, and asset and wealth administration with 24 monetary establishments, together with DBS, to develop issuance protocols and market practices.
Because the MAS reported, the workstreams are drafting fixed-income information requirements and documentation steerage that align with tokenized bond and observe issuance. DBS’s Ethereum deployment lands inside that coverage monitor and displays a choice to anchor safety tokens on public infrastructure that already hosts deep liquidity and tooling.
DBS has additionally examined public-chain settlement for institutional capital markets. In November 2023, UBS, SBI, and DBS accomplished a reside cross-border repo utilizing a natively issued digital bond and controlled digital cost tokens on a public blockchain below Venture Guardian. The transaction settled repo, bond buy, and redemption on-chain, spanning regulated entities throughout Japan, Singapore, and Switzerland.
That pilot illustrated lifecycle events for debt devices on public networks, a step that at the moment’s DBS issuance operationalizes for private-bank notes.
The financial institution’s distribution and investor eligibility mirror its current digital asset perimeter. DBS limits crypto-linked merchandise to accredited and institutional shoppers, with execution supported by its digital asset trade and custody stack.
Per DBS Digital Exchange, entry runs by institutional members and personal banking channels. Tokenized notes on Ethereum protect that gatekeeping, whereas decreasing the funding unit dimension relative to conventional structured notes, which traditionally have excessive minimums for bespoke portfolios.
The financial institution is reportedly packaging the merchandise in smaller denominations to allow portfolio rebalancing and extra frequent secondary exercise.
Win for Ethereum in RWA area
For Ethereum, a regulated issuer migrating structured observe issuance to the mainnet broadens the RWA footprint past pilot bonds and funds.
The mannequin allows cash-settled payoff profiles tied to crypto or conventional underlyings, with on-chain switch and servicing. It additionally suits MAS’s route to standardize issuance information and good contract clauses for mounted revenue merchandise, easing reconciliation throughout main sellers, custodians, and marketplaces.
Per MAS, the mounted revenue workstream focuses on protocols and disclosures for tokenized choices, which these notes can undertake in manufacturing.
The rollout additionally completes a timeline that started with DBS’s personal on-exchange safety token issuance in 2021, when it priced an SGD 15 million digital bond as the primary STO on DDEx.
That concern arrange a pathway for extra non-public placements and custody. Since then, the financial institution has layered market entry with OTC choices, custody of stablecoin reserves, and tokenized treasury pilots, then moved issuance and secondary flows into the identical EVM household utilized by Ethereum.
DBS’s tokenized notes on Ethereum place a regulated issuer’s balance-sheet product onto a public ledger below a Singapore coverage framework that’s mapping requirements for mounted revenue and funds.
This system extends a 2024 structured observe line into on-chain issuance and servicing for accredited and institutional shoppers, and it arrives with prior public-chain repo expertise and permissioned EVM tooling already in place.