HKMA's EnsembleTX completes its first cross-bank transaction of "tokenized gold x tokenized deposits"

On November 2, it was reported that the HKMA's EnsembleTX completed its first cross-bank transaction of "tokenized gold x tokenized deposits." In this transaction, ZHAOJIN MINING acted as the gold issuer, China Construction Bank Corporation (Asia) served as the gold custodian and paying bank, and BANK OF EAST ASIA, together with NETSUNION, acted as the receiving bank. The tokenization platform Anvita TaaS, independently developed by Ant Digital Technologies, provided technical support. Using the Hong Kong Gold Benchmark Price (HAU) as reference, the transaction completed the tokenized issuance and transfer of ownership of London Good Delivery (LGD) specification gold bars. The core innovation of this transaction lies in the following: without changing the existing bank gold account system and the path of property rights transfer, it introduces on-chain digital certificates (gToken) for physical gold and synchronizes the record of gold ownership transfer onto the blockchain. All parties to the transaction can verify key information and holding status of the gold based on the same on-chain record, achieving traceability and auditability of physical gold transactions and providing a trusted data foundation for the digital circulation of physical gold. At the same time, the fund settlement in the transaction was routed through tokenized deposits (TD) via the Ensemble project's interoperability layer to the Hong Kong dollar Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) system, enabling instant cross-bank fund arrival and providing a more efficient, more transparent, and more traceable settlement model for large-value gold transactions between institutions. The tokenization platform Anvita TaaS provided by Ant Digital Technologies for this transaction runs on its self-developed Layer2 blockchain platform Jovay. In addition to core capabilities such as an institutional-grade whitelist mechanism, on-chain and off-chain data synchronization, and a secure and compliant architecture, the platform was designed from the outset with compatibility with the clearing system of the Hong Kong Precious Metals Central Clearing System (HKPMCC), ensuring that tokenized gold assets can seamlessly connect to Hong Kong's central clearing infrastructure when needed. In addition, the platform adopts a modular design and can be expanded in the future to support advanced use cases such as multiple custodians, multiple asset classes, and multiple clearing networks, reserving technological space for the scaled development of Hong Kong's tokenization market.