MAS Project Guardian Overview

Wiki route

This entry sits under fintech index. Read it with Japan financial regulation for adjacent context and Japan stablecoin regulatory landscape for the broader system boundary.

[!info] TL;DR Project Guardian is a tokenised-asset proof-of-concept programme launched by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in 2022-05. More than 25 global financial institutions, including DBS / Citi / JPM / Standard Chartered / HSBC / UBS / Franklin Templeton, are running pilots in tokenised bonds, funds, foreign exchange, and carbon credits within an MAS-supervised sandbox. It has become an Asia-led coordination hub for tokenisation and forms one of the “Asia three poles” alongside Agorá and Ensemble.

Key facts

• Launched in 2022-05; the first cohort was DBS / JPM / Marketnode ^•
• In 2022-11, Pilot 1 had JPM conducting tokenised JPY / SGD foreign exchange on the Aave Arc permissioned pool ^•
• By 2024-03, it had expanded to 25+ institutions and added fund / FX / carbon-credit domains ^•
• In 2024-11, the Guardian Wholesale Network was activated as an inter-institutional settlement layer ^•
• Five major pilot directions: bonds / tokenised funds / FX / trade finance / carbon credits ^•
• MAS also participates in BIS Agorá ^•
• DBS / JPM / Standard Chartered are among the deepest participants, each spanning 3+ pilots ^•
• All pilots operate within an MAS-supervised sandbox, with no retail exposure ^•

Mechanism / How it works

Guardian functions as a “tokenised-asset laboratory”. Because it is led by MAS as a single regulator, it does not face the coordination burden associated with a multi-central-bank programme. More than 25 institutions run asset-class-specific pilots inside a supervised sandbox:

1. Bonds: UBS / Citi pilot tokenised bond secondary trading
2. Tokenised funds: Franklin Templeton / Schroders / Fidelity International
3. Foreign exchange: JPM / DBS / SBI pilot cross-currency atomic settlement
4. Trade finance: Standard Chartered / Ant International
5. Carbon credits: Linked to Singapore’s Climate Impact X (CIX)

The Guardian Wholesale Network, activated in 2024-11, is an MAS-led institutional settlement layer that does not rely on sovereign CBDC. In effect, it provides settlement infrastructure for “tokenised asset versus tokenised asset”. Because MAS is the sole regulator, decisions can be made faster. Compared with the seven-central-bank coordination costs in BIS Project Agorá, Guardian has advanced at roughly one major milestone per year. For MAS retail / institutional licensing context, see MAS PS Act overview and SG MAS DPT licensing overview.

Origin & evolution

MAS had already built out its fintech sandbox framework by 2020, and by 2022 it was advancing two adjacent tracks: Project Orchid for retail CBDC research and Project Ubin for early wholesale CBDC experiments. Project Guardian was launched in 2022-05 with a differentiated focus on tokenised assets, in contrast to mBridge / Ensemble, which emphasised tokenised money. From 2022 to 2024, the number of pilot domains expanded from 3 to 5, while the number of participating institutions rose from 3 to 25+. In 2024-11, the Guardian Wholesale Network went live, moving the project from an experimental stage toward a de facto settlement layer. In 2025, cross-connection experiments with BIS Agorá were underway through MAS’s parallel participation, with Guardian standards for tokenised assets moving toward settlement compatibility with Agorá’s monetary infrastructure.

Related

• Wiki Index
• Guardian vs Agorá in Asia’s three-pole framework
• BIS Project Agorá
• HKMA Project Ensemble
• CBDC multi-tier architecture
• three-circle MRA framework

Sources