The Bank of Canada has successfully completed a live experiment showing how tokenized bonds can be issued, traded and settled end-to-end on a distributed ledger — a milestone for digital securities in Canada.
The pilot, called Project Samara, saw government-owned Export Development Canada (EDC) issue a C$100 million ($73 million) short-term security (maturing in under three months) to a closed group of investors. The trial brought together some of the country’s biggest financial players: RBC Dominion Securities, RBC Investor Services Trust and TD Securities (a division of Toronto-Dominion Bank).
RBC operated the ledger-based platform used for the test, which handled the full lifecycle of the bond: issuance in tokenized form, bid submission, coupon payments, redemptions and secondary-market trading — all within the same system. Crucially, settlement was carried out using tokenized wholesale Canadian dollars created and managed by the Bank of Canada, moving on the same ledger as the bonds to enable on-platform settlement.
The experiment arrives as Canada tightens its digital-assets rulebook. In its November budget the federal government signaled plans for legislation governing Canadian-dollar-backed stablecoins, with supervision likely to involve the Bank of Canada and rules targeting reserve backing, redemption processes and risk management. And last month the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization (CIRO) rolled out a digital-asset custody framework designed to raise custody standards for trading platforms and reduce risks such as hacking, fraud and insolvency exposed by past industry failures.
Project Samara provides a tangible proof-of-concept for how tokenized securities and tokenized money might interact in a regulated market — a development that could accelerate adoption if regulators and market participants move to scale similar platforms.
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