Written by: @AdrianoFeria
Translation: Blockchain in Vernacular
The story behind Deutsche Bank’s recent announcement of adopting Ethereum Layer2 is not just that it has begun to embrace Ethereum, but more importantly, this move is part of Singapore’s “Project Guardian” program .
While the media has generally focused on Ethereum’s technology, it is rarely mentioned that Project Guardian unites policymakers and major industry players to jointly shape the direction of tokenization and the digital asset market. This means that Deutsche Bank’s involvement in Ethereum L2 is not an isolated attempt, but part of a global push for secure and compliant blockchain solutions to enter the core of traditional finance.
In Project Guardian, there are two main working groups:
First is a group of policymakers , including the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Bank of France, and even the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who are responsible for setting standards and legal frameworks to ensure that digital asset systems are transparent, trustworthy, and compliant around the world.
The second is the industry participants group , which includes 27 financial giants such as Deutsche Bank, HSBC, S&P Global, Moody's, OCBC, Fidelity, DBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citi, UBS, Standard Chartered, Franklin Templeton, T. Rowe Price, BNY Mellon, etc. This group provides funding, infrastructure and technical support to transform these policy frameworks into practical market solutions.
The two groups are working together to develop a blueprint for future compliant, large-scale blockchain applications.
It is worth noting that the regulatory compliance requirements required by these institutions cannot be met by any single Layer 1 blockchain. For institutions that require strict regulation and interoperability, the choice is either to build a private permissioned Layer 1 chain or to use Ethereum's L2 ecosystem.
Ethereum’s L2 framework has many advantages, which have been detailed in my recent article “Peak Ethereum Settlement”, including Ethereum’s reliable trust, powerful development tooling, the ability to flexibly adjust performance and data availability to meet enterprise needs, and the opportunity to access the world’s largest and most liquid crypto economy, which currently supports more than $120 billion in stablecoins in circulation (accounting for more than 60% of the global crypto market’s stablecoin supply).
Now that Deutsche Bank has joined this global collaboration, we expect more members of Project Guardian to follow suit. We can foresee that these institutions will launch L2 solutions and stablecoins based on Ethereum, which will further consolidate Ethereum's position as the compliance settlement layer for the world's largest financial and technology companies.
In other words, while it may appear to be a single company connecting to Ethereum, it is actually a signal that a global ecosystem of policymakers and industry leaders is focusing on Ethereum L2 infrastructure as the best path forward.
