DTCC CEO Frank La Salla Says Clearinghouse Will Test Tokenized Securities Platform in July

DTCC CEO Frank La Salla said the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation is collaborating with several high-performance layer-1 blockchains to move complex corporate actions onchain, including dividend payments and tender offers.

“Wall Street's clearinghouse seeks 'high-performance' blockchains to tokenize corporate actions DTCC CEO Frank La Salla said the clearing giant is working with layer-1 blockchains to bring millions in corporate actions like dividend payments onchain, but challenges remain”

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He described the goal as processing corporate actions at faster rates with higher resiliency, while noting that on most blockchain networks corporate actions can take a few days.

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La Salla said DTCC processes about $20 trillion in U.S. securities trades each day and plans to begin testing its tokenized securities platform in July, with a broader rollout targeted for October.

At Consensus 2026 in Miami, he framed tokenized collateral and real-time dollar liquidity as potential first major institutional use cases for blockchain.

La Salla told the conference that DTCC is seeking L1 networks “focused on the ability to process at faster rates, have higher resiliency,” because corporate-action processing is currently a bottleneck.

He said DTCC “process millions of dividend payments a day to feed to the industry,” and argued that “We need high-performance L1s to do that.”

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He also described a scenario where firms in Asia could access U.S. dollar on a Sunday in New York by posting tokenized collateral onchain in real-time, calling it “incredibly powerful.”

At the same time, he warned that blockchain systems still face major hurdles around scalability, liquidity fragmentation, and risk management.

La Salla said tokenized collateral could be blockchain’s first large-scale institutional use case by letting firms access liquidity in real time without relying on legacy settlement windows.

“Wall Street's clearinghouse seeks 'high-performance' blockchains to tokenize corporate actions DTCC CEO Frank La Salla said the clearing giant is working with layer-1 blockchains to bring millions in corporate actions like dividend payments onchain, but challenges remain”

CoinDesk

He cautioned that blockchain’s design can undermine operational efficiencies, pointing to netting transactions as one challenge where traditional market infrastructure compresses trading activity into smaller settlement obligations.

He also said “Blockchain is decentralized,” and warned that “Many of the efficiencies that we get in our industry are through concentration of liquidity.”

With DTCC planning July testing and an October rollout target, the next step in the sources is whether high-performance L1s can handle DTCC-scale corporate actions while preserving liquidity and settlement efficiency.