In November of 2022 the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced the launch of Project Guardian, a pilot which was created by J.P Morgan to explore potential DeFi use-cases for one of the world's largest and most trusted financial institutions. 

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Together, JP Morgan Onyx, DBS and SBI Digital Asset, successfully executed trials for foreign exchange transactions and government bond trades using a permissioned fork of the lending protocol Aave on the Polygon blockchain with transaction support from Biconomy.

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Easy Transaction Management with Biconomy Relayers

Onyx, the blockchain division of J.P. Morgan, began working with our team in the spring of 2022.

Their challenge was to facilitate on-chain transactions without having to pay gas fees, while ensuring uptime and a highly efficient transaction process. Doing so meant that the team at J.P. Morgan needed a solution they could trust, in which they chose to use our proven forwarder to manage the transaction and aid in contract deployment.

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Fortunately, all of this was possible with Gasless, which executes a transaction through our non-custodial relayer network, thus removing complexities and the associated gas fees of on chain transactions.

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The end result for the pilot was an abstracted transaction experience, where the Project Guardian team was able to integrate with Gasless and create a metatransaction, thereby leveraging the power of DeFi and Aave without the complexities of a traditional crypto transaction. 

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Integrating with Biconomy is simple, even in the case of the world's largest institutions, where security and code validation is paramount. By working alongside our developers, J.P.Morgan was able to effectively integrate with Gasless for the sake of their pilot program under Project Guardian.

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The Pilot

Under the pilot, DBS Bank, JP Morgan and SBI Digital Asset Holdings conducted foreign exchange and government bond transactions against liquidity pools with a forked version of permissioned Aave pools allowing for interest and fx rates. 

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In November of 2022, J.P.Morgan successfully carried out the test involving a foreign exchange of tokenized transactions with government bonds amounting to over 10 million Japanese yen (JPY) on a public blockchain (Polygon) in a live transaction for the first time in history. The transactions comprised of tokenized Singapore Government Securities Bonds, Japanese Government Bonds, Japanese Yen (JPY) and Singapore Dollar (SGD). 

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The transactions were made more efficient and cost effective by utilizing a metatransaction, which was conducted via Biconomy relayers, as part of our Gasless API.

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By doing so, J.P. Morgan assumed the general liability of depositing on-chain value via the tokenized Singapore Dollar, the first time an institutional bank has done so on a public blockchain. 

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The end result, was a live cross-currency transaction, involving tokenised JPY and SGD deposits being successfully conducted with support from the Biconomy forwarder. In addition, the simulated exercise involved the buying and selling of tokenized government bonds, yet another industry first. The pilot successfully demonstrates that DeFi protocols have proven use-cases for existing capital markets, on a public blockchain.

Scratching the surface of DeFi utility

As we approach the new year, our aim is to power web3 adoption for dApps and institutions through integrations with the Biconomy SDK, as we scratch the surface of DeFi utility.

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As we continue to build upon our relationship with J.P. Morgan, we’re looking forward to providing additional modules from Biconomy to support DeFi in the global banking and financial market. With new features such as batched transactions and social login, we’re confident that our SDK can be utilized to overcome the current challenges faced by everyday users when it comes to onboarding and navigating the Web3 ecosystem.

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Chat with us to see what the SDK can do for your dApp: https://rebrand.ly/sdk-book-demo

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About Onyx

Formed in 2020, Onyx has pioneered the world’s first bank-led blockchain platform for the exchange of value, information and digital assets. They are at the forefront of a major shift in the financial services industry. J.P.Morgan is the first global bank to offer a blockchain-based platform for wholesale payments transactions, helping to re-architect the way that money, information and assets are moving around the world.

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To learn more about Project Guardian, visit: https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/media-releases/2022/first-industry-pilot-for-digital-asset-and-decentralised-finance-goes-live#3

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