coindesk.com
A new Chainlink (LINK) initiative aims to standardize the process of collecting and distributing information about key actions taken by corporations such as mergers, dividends and stock splits – vital data that is currently fragmented across countries.
Key participants included Euroclear (a major clearing and settlement firm in traditional finance), Swift (the messaging platform that connects banks around the world) and Franklin Templeton (the asset manager), while crypto projects Avalanche (AVAX), ZKsync (ZK) and Hyperledger Besu also contribute.
The process can "dramatically reduce the manual processes required, enabling significant potential operational efficiency and cost reduction," Wellington Management's digital asset and tokenization head said.
Data provider Chainlink (LINK), with major financial market participants including Euroclear, Swift and Franklin Templeton, announced Monday that it started an initiative to make corporate actions data more accessible and standardized using artificial intelligence and blockchain tech. The project aims to address a long-standing challenge in the financial world: the lack of standardized and real-time data for corporate actions such as mergers, dividends and stock splits, which are notoriously fragmented in markets like Europe, Chainlink's report said.
Automating and standardizing this information could help significantly reduce operational inefficiencies that currently cost businesses millions of dollars every year due to errors and manual data processing, according to the report. The data is commonly used by investors.
"Turning various pieces of disconnected corporate actions data into unified 'golden records' that can then be relied on by hundreds of market participants as a definitive, single source of truth is truly a huge step forward," Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov said. "This will help financial markets synchronize faster, reduce errors and cut costs."
The initiative's first phase focused on corporate actions data of equity and fixed-income securities across six European countries. Chainlink connected its decentralized oracles with large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude to extract corporate actions data from various sources and transform it into a structured format called "Golden Records" that comply with global financial standards like the ISO 20022 and the Securities Market Practice Group (SMPG) guidelines. Then, it used Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) to publish and distribute data across different blockchains.
Later stages, for example, will explore ways to integrate this framework with existing financial systems like Swift messaging standards for broader industry adoption, the report said.
Participants in the initiative include Euroclear, Swift, UBS, Franklin Templeton, Wellington Management, CACEIS, Vontobel and Sygnum Bank. Blockchain ecosystem partners Avalanche (AVAX), ZKsync (ZK) and Hyperledger Besu networks also contributed.
"By leveraging AI and Chainlink oracles to interpret, standardize, and deliver high-value unstructured data, we can dramatically reduce the manual processes required, enabling significant potential operational efficiency and cost reduction," said Mark Garabedian, Wellington Management's director of digital assets and tokenization strategy.