DTCC Project Ion
DTCC's longest-running tokenisation thread: an equities post-trade DLT prototype that DTCC has run as a parallel ledger to its production T+1 settlement system. Sits alongside Project Whitney (private-market issuance), the Smart NAV pilot with Chainlink, and the December 2025 commitment to tokenise a subset of DTC-custodied US Treasuries on Canton Network with a Canton Foundation co-chair seat alongside Euroclear.
Operating details
How it actually settlesProject Ion is a DLT-based equities post-trade platform that DTCC has run as a parallel ledger to its production T+1 settlement system. Public coverage frames Ion as a DLT-based alternative settlement record rather than a primary venue, with the production T+1 system remaining the legal book of record. DTCC processes in the order of three quadrillion dollars of activity annually across its DTC, NSCC, and FICC subsidiaries; the tokenisation programme runs across several named workstreams (Ion for equities post-trade, Project Whitney for private-market issuance, Smart NAV with Chainlink for NAV data on-chain, and the December 2025 commitment to tokenise a subset of DTC-custodied US Treasuries on Canton).
DTCC · Digital Asset (Canton technology partner) · Chainlink (Smart NAV pilot) · Euroclear (Canton Foundation co-chair) · Various US broker-dealer participants in the Ion pilot
Project Ion has run as a DLT post-trade prototype at production-adjacent scale since 2022. The December 2025 DTCC-Digital Asset partnership commits to mint a subset of DTC-custodied Treasuries on Canton with a controlled-production MVP targeted for H1 2026. Production status of Project Ion as of late 2025 has been intermittently disclosed in public coverage.
Ion sits inside DTCC's existing DTC subsidiary, supervised by the SEC as a registered clearing agency. The legal book of record remains the production T+1 system; Ion runs as a parallel ledger rather than as a new clearing entity. The Canton-based US Treasuries tokenisation work proceeds under DTC custody rules and the Canton Foundation governance framework.
Production status of Project Ion as of late 2025 should be checked against current DTCC disclosure rather than assumed. The DTC custodial wrapper is the structural constraint on US tokenised-securities issuance: any production-scale tokenisation of US equities, corporate bonds, or Treasuries has to either route through DTC or stand up a parallel custody and registration structure that no entity has so far attempted at scale.
Recent news2 curated · awaiting ingestion
- CURATED2025-12-17DTCCDTCC and Digital Asset Partner to Tokenize DTC-Custodied U.S. Treasury Securities on the Canton Network
DTCC committed to mint a subset of DTC-custodied Treasuries on Canton with a controlled-production MVP targeted for H1 2026, and took a co-chair seat on the Canton Foundation alongside Euroclear, anchoring the network's governance.
- CURATED2022-11-30DTCCDTCC expands ION DLT post-trade platform with new participants
Original Project Ion launch as a DLT-based parallel ledger for US equities post-trade, marking DTCC's longest-running tokenisation thread.
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