Wall Street's clearinghouse seeks 'high-performance' blockchains to tokenize corporate actions

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DTCC CEO Frank La Salla said the clearing elephantine is moving with layer-1 blockchains to bring millions successful firm actions similar dividend payments onchain, but challenges remain.

May 6, 2026, 10:29 p.m. 2 min read

Wall Street's clearinghouse is moving with blockchain developers to bring 1 of superior market's slightest glamorous but astir operationally analyzable functions onchain: firm actions.

Frank La Salla, CEO of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC), said Wednesday astatine Consensus 2026 successful Miami that the marketplace infrastructure elephantine is collaborating with respective layer-1 (L1) blockchain networks to amended however dividend payments, tender offers and different post-trade events could beryllium processed successful tokenized markets.

"We are moving with immoderate precise bully L1s close now, who are focused connected the quality to process astatine faster rates, person higher resiliency," helium said.

Currently, the bottleneck is that connected astir blockchain networks could instrumentality a fewer days to process firm actions, helium pointed out.

"We process millions of dividend payments a time to provender to the industry," Le Salla said. "We request high-performance L1s to bash that."

DTCC sits astatine the halfway of U.S. superior markets infrastructure, processing astir $20 trillion successful Treasury and firm securities trades each day. The clearinghouse has spent astir a decennary exploring blockchain applications, but La Salla said the exertion lone became commercially meaningful erstwhile real-world usage cases began to look successful the pst fewer years.

Recently, the steadfast accelerated its propulsion to modernize marketplace infrastructure with tokenization and blockchain tech. This week, DTCC announced to statesman investigating its tokenized securities level successful July up of a broader rollout successful October.

La Salla said collateral question whitethorn go blockchain's archetypal large-scale organization usage case. Tokenized collateral could let firms extracurricular U.S. marketplace hours to entree liquidity successful existent clip without relying connected bequest colony windows. He described a script wherever firms successful Asia could entree U.S. dollar connected a Sunday successful New York by posting tokenized collateral onchain successful real-time.

"That is incredibly powerful," La Salla said.

But helium cautioned that blockchain systems inactive look large hurdles astir scalability, liquidity fragmentation and hazard management.

One challenge, for example, is netting transactions. Traditional marketplace infrastructure compresses monolithic trading enactment into smaller colony obligations, reducing superior requirements crossed the system.

“Blockchain is decentralized," La Salla said. "Many of the efficiencies that we get successful our manufacture are done attraction of liquidity."

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