The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), a key pillar of global financial market infrastructure, has launched a new blockchain-based platform to transform how collateral is managed and moved across financial institutions.
Announced on Wednesday via a company blog post, the initiative called AppChain, will be publicly demoed on April 23 at the DTCC’s “Great Collateral Experiment.” The platform is built to tokenize real-world assets and streamline collateral flows, marking a major step in the institutional adoption of decentralized finance (DeFi) principles.
AppChain is designed to enhance the mobility and velocity of collateral, improving both capital efficiency and liquidity across traditionally fragmented systems. According to DTCC, the platform will support the creation of an open digital liquidity ecosystem, enabling financial institutions to deploy applications that automate and optimize collateral operations.
“Our goal is to highlight how we can enable real-world, institutional-grade digital collateral market infrastructure,” said Nadine Chakar, global head of DTCC Digital Assets.
“This platform is unique in that we’ve created something that’s more open, flexible, dynamic, and comprehensive than any previous digital collateral initiative.”
Built on Enterprise Ethereum Technology
AppChain runs on LF Decentralized Trust’s Besu platform, an enterprise-grade, open-source Ethereum client tailored for business-grade blockchain deployments. This allows for smart contract automation, interoperability, and a secure environment for managing high-value institutional assets.
Dan Doney, CTO of DTCC Digital Assets, called collateral mobility the “killer app” for institutional blockchain use cases, citing the ability of smart contracts to operate seamlessly, even during market volatility.
DTCC said the launch comes in response to increasing market complexity, cost pressures, and the growing need for high-quality collateral solutions in real-time. Traditionally, collateral management has relied on siloed systems, slow processes, and manual coordination.
Tokenizing collateral assets through AppChain could significantly reduce these frictions, allowing firms to move capital faster, more securely, and with greater transparency.
A Giant Moves Toward Blockchain
DTCC is one of the most important players in global finance. It acts as the main clearinghouse for nearly all securities transactions in the U.S. and many around the world, processing more than $2.5 quadrillion worth of trades every year. Its job is to make sure that the buying, selling, and safekeeping of financial assets happen smoothly, securely, and without problems that could disrupt markets.
For decades, DTCC has relied on centralized and complex technology systems to carry out these tasks. While those systems have been reliable, they are expensive to run and hard to upgrade, especially as financial markets become faster and more global, with digital assets and 24/7 trading becoming the new norm.
Now, with the launch of AppChain, DTCC isn’t just testing blockchain, it’s making a bold move toward the future of financial systems. This new platform shows that blockchain, tokenization, and smart contracts are no longer niche ideas, they’re becoming key parts of how finance will work going forward.
