07-29-2026 
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Tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) is on the rise, but more work is needed to create the fertile ground for it to scale. This was the message of the recently held London Blockchain Summit on tokenization, in which expert speakers from across the decentralized finance (DeFi) and traditional finance (TradFi) spectrum charted a course forward for the market, with broad agreement that greater regulatory clarity can provide the necessary standards required for interoperability, which in turn will allow tokenization to scale.
- Inside tokenization’s next chapter
- Industry’s call for regulatory clarity
- Building trust through standards
- Connecting markets, unlocking value
On July 7, London Blockchain hosted its “Institutional Tokenisation Summit” at the London offices of international law firm DLA Piper, bringing together 200 industry attendees to convene an institutional forum exploring the practicalities of tokenization. The who’s who of bankers, asset managers, market makers, legal and finance experts, and infrastructure providers were treated to an international lineup of expert speakers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland, and the European Union.
The timing of the summit was no coincidence, coming as it did just as the tokenization space reached new heights, with on-chain equity volumes surging 145% to $3.86 billion in the wake of the June SpaceX IPO. In terms of the RWA tokenization market more broadly, a report published this July by BeInCrypto valued it at $60 billion across 7,000 products, and this seemingly booming market shows no signs of slowing, with some predicting it to reach $5.5 Trillion by 2030.
However, the same BeInCrypto report also found that of the 1,289 surveyed tokenized assets above $100,000 in value, 910 of them—representing $32.9 billion—showed zero weekly transfer activity. A worrying stat that appeared to demonstrate that putting assets on chain is not the problem; rather, it is making this market more accessible to more people.
Getting more participants and business entities transacting in tokenized assets was also the gauntlet laid down by the London Blockchain Institutional Tokenisation Summit, which provided the platform for experts and insiders to make connections, inspire conversation, and build a consensus on the solutions to scaling, which largely boiled down to: regulation leads to industry standards, which leads to interoperability, which leads to scaling.
Regulatory clarity, transparency, and ZKP
The day’s intensive schedule of talks, panels, and networking covered the full tokenization lifecycle, and it quickly became clear that one of the principal things tokenization advocates want is regulatory clarity at every stage of this cycle.
This marker was laid out in the morning’s first panel, titled “Building the Tokenized Issuance Stack: Issuer, Administrator, Legal, Custodian, Platform,” in which Myles Harrison, Chief Product Officer at AMINA Bank, argued that regulation always brings a wave of innovation.
He cited Europe and the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation as an example, which provided the clarity and framework for digital asset firms authorized in one EU country to operate across all 27 member states, whilst encouraging innovation and increasing digitalization in the EU’s financial sector.
In contrast, fellow panelist Paul Landless, Partner at DLA Piper, noted that he’d seen a dramatic shift among clients seeking legal and regulatory certainty in the U.K., which remains without a crypto asset regime, at least until October 2027.
“I’m no longer being asked what it is, but where is it,” he said.
The specters of regulatory clarity and compliance haunted a number of the day’s events, including a talk by Martin Halford, Chief Executive Officer & Chief Technology Officer of Polymath Network, on the “Confidential Assets and the Next Phase of Institutional Tokenization.”
Halford explained how financial markets rely on privacy with transparency; an individual’s trades and transactions are private, but exchanges and institutions maintain detailed data on those trading and issuing, which is then shared, when necessary, with regulators, who must trust that the data is accurate. This is how the wheels of capital markets keep turning.
However, when it comes to public blockchains and shared ledgers, information about transactions are available for all to see, but individual participants often do not have to provide the same level of personal/private information on themselves to participate, which causes a problem for regulators and a lack of trust from TradFi.
In other words, to get more TradFi and regulators on board and to scale tokenization, what is needed is a way to bring blockchain tokens into compliance with traditional markets. This is why Polymath launched Polymesh, a blockchain that requires those who transact on it to “give up their identity” in order to bridge the gap between blockchain and regulators.
Using a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) system, a cryptographic method used to prove knowledge about a piece of data, without revealing the data itself, participants can prove the existence of the personal information to regulators and other participants, without having to reveal more than is necessary.
As Halford described it: “It’s decentralized, regulatory friendly, anonymous, and fit for tokenization.”
Beyond simply making the blockchain space more compliant and regulator-friendly, the main benefit of regulation, according to many speakers and audience members at the summit, is to provide standards that all participants know and can adhere to.Standards are the foundation
One of the morning speakers, Shrey Rastogi, CEO of blockchain infrastructure provider KAIO, suggested that to build tokenization as a credible fix for the inefficiencies of traditional RWA trading, it has to be, to a standard, acceptable for traditional institutions, so that you may “bring a lot of partners to the table that meet regulatory standards.”
This argument was no more apparent than in a talk from Abrar Akhtar, Vice Chairman (DLT/ 1 – Technical Committee) at The British Standards Institution (BSI), who called for experts—many of whom were in attendance—to help shape institutional standards for financial asset tokenization.
The BSI is the national standards body of the U.K. and produces technical standards on a wide range of products and services, as well as supplying standards certification services for businesses and personnel.
According to Akhtar, widely agreed—or preferably universal—standards applied by those in the tokenization space would be the shot in the arm needed for the sector to scale beyond its current primary use, as a growing store of value, to products more actively being transacted.
Fortunately, he said that progress is being made on this front, with the BSI already having about 20 countries around the table.
Based on the audience reaction to the talk and Akhtar’s call for more participants, there is clearly a willingness and urgency to join this effort, as his talk precipitated the most audience questions of the day, including how to build consensus on terminology and how to replicate standards and taxonomies across asset classes.
Following on from regulatory clarity helping to create industry standards, the next logical step in the journey becomes increased interoperability, a subject on the tip of many speakers’ and attendees’ tongues.
Interoperability is key
Essentially, in the context of finance and tokenization, interoperability is the ability of tokenized assets, platforms, and blockchain networks to exchange data, transfer value, and interact seamlessly. It enables tokens to move across systems securely and efficiently, reducing fragmentation, improving liquidity, lowering transaction costs, and supporting broader adoption of digital financial markets.
As explained by Jack Pouderoyen, Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Swift, in a recent report, it is “about helping institutions to coordinate payment flows, validate obligations and manage liquidity across multiple environments without introducing new sources of risk or fragmentation.”
Speaking on the subject of tokenized deposits, Pouderoyen went on to note that: “The challenge is no longer about the creation of tokenized deposits, but in enabling them to function as a usable, interoperable form of money across institutions and borders.”
This is also true for tokenized RWA, where interoperability can allow tokenization to be realized at scale, which is why it became somewhat of a catchphrase at the summit.
This was evidenced by Sophie Lessar, Partner at DLA Piper, who introduced a panel on “Realizing Cross Border Collateral Mobility” by stating that “a lot of work being done on interoperability, a lot of what we’re seeing from a legal point of view is how the TradFi world and blockchain world need to be interoperable, so you don’t create two universes or cut one of them off.”
This idea of avoiding separate worlds was echoed by Harrison of AMINA Bank, who warned against the creation of “walled gardens,” saying that institutions need to be able to hold tokenized deposits and stablecoins, and they need to be interoperable.
Toward the latter part of the day, with attendees running on coffee fumes and an apparent shared optimism, James Pollock, EMEA Sales Lead of Digital Assets at the Canton Network, which describes itself as the first privacy-enabled public blockchain fit for institutional assets, summed up the main barriers to interoperability as “finding counterparties” and “finding solution that are better than current solutions.”
This fittingly encapsulated the driving force behind the London Blockchain Institutional Tokenisation Summit, which, as is part of the “London Blockchain Conference” event ecosystem, was established with exactly the purpose of showcasing how blockchain technology can and already is improving real-world enterprise, as well as getting the crucial decisionmakers and market movers in the same room, to help forge the necessary connections that will allow this ongoing project to scale.
If the frantic swapping of cards and excited chatter of the post-summit networking drinks were anything to go by, the project of finding counterparties and solutions is well underway.
Watch | Tokenization on public blockchain: Transforming RWAs and finance
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