The notes are issued on Ethereum and sold in smaller ($1,000) units than conventional private-bank products, targeting distribution to eligible clients via licensed platforms.
The move follows DBS’s rollout of crypto-linked options and structured notes for eligible clients in late 2024, which the bank said would begin in the fourth quarter of that year.
DBS has run parallel experiments on permissioned infrastructure inside its transaction banking stack. In October 2024, the bank unveiled DBS Token Services, an EVM-compatible permissioned blockchain integrated with its core payments engine to enable treasury tokens, conditional payments, and programmable rewards for institutions.
DBS has also tested public-chain settlement for institutional capital markets. In November 2023, UBS, SBI, and DBS completed a live cross-border repo using a natively issued digital bond and regulated digital payment tokens on a public blockchain under Project Guardian. The transaction settled repo, bond purchase, and redemption on-chain, spanning regulated entities across Japan, Singapore, and Switzerland.
The bank’s distribution and investor eligibility mirror its existing digital asset perimeter. DBS limits crypto-linked products to accredited and institutional clients, with execution supported by its digital asset exchange and custody stack.
The bank is reportedly packaging the products in smaller denominations to enable portfolio rebalancing and more frequent secondary activity.
For Ethereum, a regulated issuer migrating structured note issuance to the mainnet broadens the RWA footprint beyond pilot bonds and funds.
The model enables cash-settled payoff profiles tied to crypto or traditional underlyings, with on-chain transfer and servicing. It also fits MAS’s direction to standardize issuance data and smart contract clauses for fixed income products, easing reconciliation across primary dealers, custodians, and marketplaces.
The rollout also completes a timeline that began with DBS’s own on-exchange security token issuance in 2021, when it priced an SGD 15 million digital bond as the first STO on DDEx.
DBS’s tokenized notes on Ethereum place a regulated issuer’s balance-sheet product onto a public ledger under a Singapore policy framework that is mapping standards for fixed income and funds.
The program extends a 2024 structured note line into on-chain issuance and servicing for accredited and institutional clients, and it arrives with prior public-chain repo experience and permissioned EVM tooling already in place.
