Chainlink Chosen for UK Central Bank’s New On‑Chain Settlement Pilot - Crypto Economy

TL;DR

• The Bank of England selected Chainlink for the Synchronisation Lab, where onchain settlements between central bank money and tokenized assets will be tested.
• The lab evaluates atomic settlement across FX, tokenized bonds, and collateral, using APIs on a simulated infrastructure with no real funds involved.
• Chainlink provides its oracle and interoperability infrastructure to synchronize sovereign payments with onchain registries.

The Bank of England selected Chainlink to participate in the Synchronisation Lab, an institutional initiative focused on testing onchain settlement models that connect central bank money with tokenized financial assets. The project is part of the modernization process of the United Kingdom’s wholesale payment system and aims to redefine coordination between traditional infrastructures and blockchain-based registries.

The core of the project is atomic settlement between onchain-issued securities and central bank funds. The objective is to execute payments and asset transfers simultaneously, without the risk of mismatches between the two layers. Chainlink will participate as an infrastructure provider, contributing its decentralized oracle and interoperability framework to synchronize payment systems with digital asset registries in real time.


Chainlink Will Provide Its Oracle Infrastructure

The initiative is being developed on a simulated version of the Bank of England’s modernized RTGS system, known as RT2. Participants interact with this infrastructure through dedicated APIs and interfaces, and no real funds are used. The central bank clarified that the lab does not constitute regulatory approval or commercial authorization, but instead operates as a technical environment to define a future operational capability.

The use cases under evaluation include foreign exchange transactions, tokenized bonds, and collateral management. These involve real-world assets represented in digital formats, focused on institutional flows and post-trade processes. The scope of the project is limited to the infrastructure layer and does not include applications aimed at retail users.


SWIFT and Other Firms Participate in the Project

In addition to Chainlink, UAC Labs AG participates with a similar mandate. The lab also includes traditional financial infrastructure firms such as Swift, LSEG, and Partior, which are testing different synchronized settlement scenarios between legacy systems and onchain environments.

Chainlink’s selection is significant because it places the network within the technical core of the experiment. Its role is to enable secure and verifiable communication between systems that operate under different frameworks, coordinating central bank payments with tokenized asset transfers.

Following the announcement, the market showed no immediate reaction. The Chainlink token (LINK) is trading around $8.51, posting a daily decline of 1.62%. Its market capitalization is close to $6 billion, with 24-hour trading volume near $614.5 million.

The Synchronisation Lab is part of a broader redesign of the United Kingdom’s financial infrastructure. The project focuses on the operational layer that connects sovereign money with tokenized markets