>At their core, blockchains give us a way to take financial activity spread across different databases around the world and unify it in real time under shared rules. The opportunity is to bring the siloed databases of exchanges, banks, and other financial institutions into one shared database, with the blockchain acting as a common API. Assets, collateral, and applications can then operate within the same system. >The two big questions are who houses this activity and how large it can become. I’ll save the first for another day, but the second is where I think people are dramatically underestimating the opportunity. It's actually unbelievable that people are still writing a thesis around a blockchain (the one they'd prefer, of course) serving as a "unified ledger" that connects these disparate systems in 2026. What's actually happening is that "financial activity spread across different databases around the world" is *STILL* being spread across different siloed databases around the world, except, those siloed, databases are now peer-hosted and they're called...a blockchain. Consider: Ethereum thinks of itself as the "global settlement layer" because it has the most TVL. Solana calls itself "Internet Capital Markets" because it has the most spot trading volume of any chain. Hyperliquid calls itself the "chain to house all of finance" because it has the most open interest among perp DEXes. XRPL calls itself the "Internet of Value" because it has a cult that can't look up data on DeFiLlama. LayerZero (ZERO) is launching a high performance chain and it will have Citadel (supposedly) trading on it. Broadridge's Distributed Ledger Repo (DLR) platform—which runs on the Canton Network—processes over $359 billion in average daily repo transactions and more than $7.5 trillion in monthly repo volume Avalanche calls itself the blockchain "built for institutions" because it hosts Goldman Sachs' $100B Treasury fund and Progmat's $3B securities book, on its private subnets. DTCC, which settles $4 quadrillion per year for all US capital markets, is launching their own chain (DTCC Collateral Appchain) in Q1 2027, along with a multichain tokenization service. SWIFT, which moves the world's GDP every three days, is launching its own chain for its 11,000+ member banks for cross-border payments, which can also evolve into supporting securities, too. Euroclear (36.8 trillion Euros worth of assets under custody), which is the DTCC of Europe, says that they need to have a **MINIMUM** of one chain for each asset class and that they can't even share a ledger with non-EU citizens/entities. Countless more banks (JPM, Wells Fargo, etc) and institutions are launching (or already using) their own private, permissioned chains. Even the BIS, which originally coined the vision and term of the "Unified Ledger", conceded that a single shared ledger to host the world's activity will not happen. The goal of tokenization (or onchain finance or Internet Capital Markets) is to have a consistent state across all chains with real-time data orchestration, automated compliance and atomic DvP/ PvP transactions, enabling T+0 settlement, 24x7 open markets, and regulatory monitoring. I'll let you decide which protocol will come closest to "bringing together the siloed databases of exchanges, banks, and other financial institutions into one shared system, so that assets, collateral, and applications can then operate within the same system", but you can take it to the bank that it won't be a blockchain.

The DTCC clears and settles $4 quadrillion per year for all US capital markets. Listen to their CTO:

New product being built by Chainlink and deployed on Aave changing that. Anchorage would hold the underlying collateral for the duration of the loan, operate the collateral management system that serves as the source of truth for balances and lifecycle events, and execute liquidations as an OTC sale of the underlying asset. Chainlink CustodySync would mirror custodial balances onchain with a non-transferable receipt token, and Chainlink price feeds would give both Aave and the custodian the same data, keeping LTV in sync. Borrowed stablecoins would route to the borrower in a single transaction.