Five G-SIBs launch GL1 Organisation to standardise tokenised financial markets

Five global systemically important banks have incorporated a non-profit body called the Global Layer One Organisation (GL1 Org) to develop and promote common frameworks for tokenised financial markets. The founding members are HSBC, Kinexys by JP Morgan, MUFG, Societe Generale FORGE, and Standard Chartered. The organisation is actively inviting market infrastructures, fintechs, and policymakers to join, signalling an intent to broaden the coalition beyond its banking core.

GL1 Org represents a transition of stewardship from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), which launched the original GL1 initiative three years ago under Project Guardian. That initiative carried an ambitious original vision: a shared, open distributed ledger for regulated finance, sometimes framed as a global unified ledger. That vision did not materialise. According to sources cited by Ledger Insights, founders were reluctant to surrender intellectual property rights, which steered the project toward agreeing on rules rather than constructing shared infrastructure.

The tangible output from that prior phase consists of two toolkits published last year. One provides a checklist for evaluating whether a given network meets minimum standards for institutional engagement; the other addresses programmable compliance, embedding regulatory requirements directly into infrastructure rather than applying them as a later layer. Four of the five founding banks contributed to those toolkits alongside Euroclear, which is notably absent from the new organisation’s founding membership. GL1 Org now carries the task of driving adoption of those frameworks across a broader market, a mandate that is easier to state than to execute given the fragmented state of tokenised asset infrastructure globally.