DTCC Taps Chainlink to Bring Blockchain to Collateral Management

DTCC, a cornerstone of U.S. market infrastructure, is making what it describes as its biggest blockchain push yet, aiming to move Wall Street's back-office collateral processes closer to a 24/7 operating model. The firm said Tuesday it will integrate Chainlink infrastructure into its digital collateral platform. DTCC's collateral management initiative, Collateral AppChain, will use Chainlink's runtime environment and data standards to support near-real-time collateral management across global markets and blockchain networks. DTCC expects the platform to go live in the fourth quarter of 2026. The announcement expands an existing relationship between the two organizations. It follows Smart NAV, a 2024 pilot in which DTCC and Chainlink tested moving mutual fund net asset value data onto a blockchain, with JPMorgan Chase, Franklin Templeton and BNY Mellon participating. DTCC said its objective is to reduce delays and fragmentation in today's collateral system, where assets can become stuck across institutions and time zones. By tokenizing collateral and using smart contracts to automate workflows, the setup is designed to enable near-real-time movement of collateral between traditional financial markets and blockchain networks. "By modernizing collateral liquidity through tokenization and distributed ledger technology (DLT), our goal is to enable around-the-clock, near-realtime collateral management across global markets and blockchains," said Nadine Chakar, Managing Director and Global Head of Digital Assets at DTCC. She added that integrating Chainlink's CRE and data standards is intended to provide a unified on-chain environment that can pull in asset prices, valuations and other collateral protocol data. Chainlink's runtime environment will provide orchestration, data access and automation for AppChain, supporting processes such as eligibility checks, asset valuation, margin calculation, collateral optimization and settlement. DTCC said the approach avoids building one-off connections to each data source and instead offers a reusable framework that can expand to new data types, asset classes and collateral use cases. DTCC's scale highlights the potential impact. In 2025, it processed $47 trillion in securities transactions and held $114 trillion in securities from more than 150 countries. DTCC recently said more than 50 companies have joined an independent working group tied to its tokenization platform, with a limited real-time trading test planned for July and a full launch scheduled for October. Chainlink's native token, LINK, fell more than 3% on the day to $10.22, though it is up 17% over the past month.