The need for an organization that connects all banks is evident in today’s hyper-globalized economy, where funds, goods and services are sent to all corners of the world.
So as globalization spread, our deeply interconnected and centralized financial system led to the development in 1973 of SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication), a member-owned messaging network that allows financial institutions to send secure communications and make interbank can verify and settle transactions. transactions.
SWIFT connects more than 11,000 financial institutions in 200 countries and territories – and has long served as a unified and stable institution amid a complex and unstable world order.
But recently, the exclusion of many sanctioned Iranian and Russian banks from SWIFT has prompted China and other countries to launch competing alternative intermediaries. This has led to a wholesale rethink of how international finance should be structured.
While it is appropriate to ban certain institutions from SWIFT due to connections to state-sponsored violence, terror, or other criminal activity, the fractionation of centralized entities into siled, competing groups poses a long-term threat to global finance. Changing attitudes towards centralized finance and innovative fintech applications further undermine the current financial system and highlight its shortcomings.
Meanwhile, the rise of blockchain-based trading solutions has led those in the traditional financial sector to question the role of intermediaries. More and more thought is being given to how this technology can improve the speed and frequency of interbank transactions.
After all, the primary goal of Bitcoin and the broader crypto movement was to eliminate what seemed like an unjust financial order. This order, dominated by major banks and financial institutions, exercised censorship and control over the world’s population, especially in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
Despite being largely opposed to crypto and blockchain until a few years ago, financial institutions are now embracing blockchain as a technology, crypto as an investment opportunity and DeFi as a sandbox for innovative financial products.
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This recognition of the benefits of blockchain shows that it is capable and effective in removing the middleman. Further confirming this were the recent announcements that SWIFT, in partnership with more than a dozen major financial institutions, is experimenting with interoperable on-chain token transfers and tokenization.
Together with SWIFT’s messaging technology, Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) and a public Ethereum testnet facilitate the routing of messages between legacy banking systems. This alone should legitimize the idea that digital assets and blockchains are legitimate infrastructure components that banks should and will adopt.
But it’s not entirely clear where this adoption could go next, as SWIFT’s use of CCIP simply gives an intermediary a new capability in the form of blockchain.
What if we could cut out the middlemen?
It is widely recognized that blockchain technology has the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of the financial sector by reducing dependence on intermediaries. But this current practical feasibility is hampered by the complicated nature of reforming an entrenched, centuries-old system.
Rather than seeking an immediate overhaul, the focus should instead shift to making gradual steps in reducing dependence on these financial intermediaries. The path to replacing intermediaries with blockchain technology requires the development of use cases, along with achieving interoperability between different blockchains and traditional banking systems.
This requires not only demonstrating the technological benefits of the blockchain – particularly its security and cost-effectiveness – in an enterprise environment, but also facilitating interoperability between dozens of disconnected blockchain networks. Because they are silos of data by design, blockchains are unable to share data or transfer assets between each other. Common mechanisms to increase blockchain interoperability, including bridges, sidechains, and cross-chain platforms, all come with their fair share of complexities, security issues, and potential compliance challenges.
Ensuring limited interoperability and relying on sensitive smart contracts to connect diverse blockchain networks pose significant barriers to embracing the technology for financial transactions. The prospect of all financial institutions unanimously adopting the same blockchain network seems unlikely, given the decades-long history of technological infrastructure adoption. Consequently, the need for intermediaries becomes apparent, as illustrated by the creation of SWIFT to facilitate cross-border transactions.
But that means the fintech industry, which sits squarely between the financial world and the blockchain world, must develop solutions and protocols to connect these isolated data silos. An August 2023 SWIFT report states that “enterprises prefer to leverage their existing infrastructure, manage implementations and proven business processes to connect to blockchain ledgers, where tokens are recorded in a way that is both compliant and secure is.”
Because financial institutions understandably don’t want to give up their existing infrastructure, the key is integrating new technologies between systems that use different blockchains. Efficient, loosely coupled integrations between entities and establishing a “trusted network” to facilitate the secure exchange of value and data can enable institutions to make affordable and convenient transfers.
Atomic swap transactions play an important role in ensuring that transactions occur smoothly and without errors, especially when it comes to different blockchains and older legacy systems. They help maintain consistency and reliability throughout the transaction lifecycle.
Furthermore, they also help improve the overall security of asset transfers, especially against threats such as unauthorized access attempts and data manipulation. They do this by setting up a secure communications network that supports essential operations such as authentication and encryption. This means that the information and transactions within the system are better protected against possible risks.
SWIFT’s dominance over the transmission of financial information and messages is unlikely to be broken any time soon, but its research into interoperable blockchains and tokenization offers great hope for reducing the inefficiencies caused by intermediaries – such as transaction delays, additional costs and reimbursements, dependency risks, lack of transparency and compliance challenges. Recognizing SWIFT as a legitimate and necessary financial institution while building the necessary infrastructure to do what it does, but more efficiently, affordably and securely, offers the best short-term path to a future without intermediaries.
Regardless of what comes from SWIFT’s experiments with blockchain, institutional adoption of blockchain technology will continue to grow as 97% of institutional investors believe tokenization will revolutionize asset management. Meeting this demand and bridging these two disconnected ecosystems can only be done through interoperability and automation, which can do what intermediaries do, but cheaper and faster.
Eitan Katz is the CEO and co-founder of Kima. Before Kima, Eitan was a seasoned executive with a distinguished background and leadership roles at the IDF (Intelligence/8200), HP, HPE and BMC. His list of accomplishments includes building HP’s Global Innovation and Incubation program, leading HPE’s Enterprise Mobile platform, and being a 3X founder as well as a founding partner of Aegis, the first MPC-based bitcoin wallet. Eitan’s training in the Elite Israeli Intelligence Forces and his experience have instilled in him a unique perspective on deep technology, leadership, strategy and execution.