Citi has completed a proof of concept on tokenisation of private funds along with Wellington Management and WisdomTree. With ABN AMRO simulating the role of a traditional investor, the PoC tested the tokenisation of a Wellington-issued private equity fund by bringing it on to a DLT network. The underlying fund distribution rules were encoded into the smart contract and embedded in the token transferred to hypothetical WisdomTree clients. The PoC demonstrated how smart contracts could be used to enable greater automation and potentially create an enhanced compliance and control environment for issuers, distributors, and investors.
The PoC, which was conducted on the Avalanche Spruce institutional test Subnet, found that smart-contract capabilities could deliver new functionality and operational efficiencies, which are currently unavailable with traditional assets. These new functionalities could enable buy- and sell-side institutions to engage with distributed ledger infrastructure in a low-risk, low barrier-to-entry manner that is consistent with regulations.