Open research & teaching material

From asset
to settlement

Structures.
Custody.
Licences.
Rails.

A hub for tokenization and digital payment rails: the structures that hold an asset, the permissions that move it, the rails that settle the money — and where each part is implemented.

The chain of claims

Five links, and only one of them is code.

A token is a claim on a claim on a claim. Read from the bottom up, each link has to be enforceable in the place it lives, and any one of them failing makes the token above it worth nothing — however correct the contract is.

This is why regulators describe tokenization as a delivery method rather than a new asset class. The instrument is the same one it always was. What changed is how it is recorded and how quickly it settles.

The chain in full →
01A real thing, somewhereA building, an invoice, a fund unit, a barrel of oil. It sits in a place, under a legal system, and someone owns it there. Nothing about putting it on a ledger changes where it sits or who a court would say owns it.
02A legal owner you can nameUsually a company formed for this one asset — a special purpose vehicle. It holds title, it can be audited, and it can be wound up without touching anything else. The SPV is what makes the asset separable.
03An interest in that ownerShares, units, notes. This is the thing people actually buy and sell: not the building, but a claim on the company that holds the building. In most jurisdictions that interest is a security, and the obligations follow from that.
04A register of who holds itSomeone has to be able to say, authoritatively, who owns what today. That role is often a regulated one. A token can be the register, but only if the law where the SPV sits agrees that it is.
05A token pointing at the interestThe software layer, and the only link in the chain that is new. It can carry transfer restrictions, settle in minutes and be read by anyone. It cannot make any of the four links above true.
The point

A ledger records a right. It does not create one

Every question worth asking about a tokenized asset is a question about the arrangement underneath itWho owns it · where · and who says so
The money leg

Settlement is a second problem, not a detail of the first.

Tokenizing an asset and paying for it are usually discussed together and built separately. The asset side is a question of title and registers; the money side is a question of accounts, licences and rails. They meet only at the moment of exchange, and that moment is where most designs turn out to be incomplete.

A
The payment leg is a separate problem

Selling an interest means someone sends money. That money starts in a bank account in one country and has to end in a bank account in another, and neither of those is on a ledger.

B
Stablecoins move the bank, they do not remove it

Value can cross a border in minutes on a public ledger. Turning local currency into that instrument, and back again at the other end, still requires a licensed institution at each end.

C
Correspondent banking is the thing being replaced

A conventional cross-border payment hops through intermediary banks, each adding a day, a fee and its own compliance check. The value of a stablecoin leg is that it collapses the middle, not that it removes the ends.

Who is permitted

Software is not a permission.

Custody

Holding someone else’s money or assets is a regulated act.

In most places it requires a licence, client assets kept separate from the firm’s own, and a plan for what happens to them if the firm fails. A wallet the user alone controls avoids this question by not holding anything.

Dealing and arranging

Bringing buyers and sellers together is its own licence.

A venue that lists interests, quotes a price and takes subscriptions is doing something regulators recognise and name, whether or not the software calls it that. Publishing a record is not the same act as offering what the record describes.

Jurisdiction

Every permission is attached to a place.

A licence held in one country authorises activity under that country’s law, for people it recognises. Where the vehicle is incorporated, where the holder lives and where the custodian sits are three separate answers, and all three matter.

Working implementations

Two of these links are built, and it is worth being exact about which.

The research here is not hypothetical — parts of the chain exist as running software, and reading about them is more useful when you can see where they start and stop.

Link 05 · the token

The tokenization layer

Contracts across several virtual machines, an asset model that records what a unit is backed by, transfer restrictions the token itself enforces, and continuous reconciliation of supply against attested reserve. It issues and records. It does not hold title, and it does not offer anything for sale.

boli.technology ↗
The money leg

Accounts and settlement

Business onboarding and verification, accounts that receive local currency, conversion to and from stablecoins, payouts back into local rails, and foreign exchange between them — provided through regulated partners rather than in place of them.

skerry.xyz ↗

Neither is a licensed institution, and neither can be the custodian, the transfer agent or the party that places an offering. Those links belong to firms that hold the relevant permissions in the relevant place. The open problems page sets out exactly where the built parts stop and what is being done about it.

Where to start

Read it in order

Each page assumes the one before it. Tokenization builds the chain of claims, payments builds the money leg, licensing explains who may touch either, and open problems is where the field currently runs out of answers.