Tokenisation Infrastructure and Standards: ERC-7540, Composability, and Fund Architecture

The blockchain debate — Ethereum versus Solana versus Avalanche versus private chains — captures attention. But the standard that assets conform to matters more than the chain they settle on.
 
Consider the analogy: TCP/IP did not win because it was the best networking protocol. It won because it became the standard that everyone built on. Interoperability compounds. Every new participant that adopts a standard increases its value for everyone already using it.
 
Tokenised assets face the same dynamic. An institutional investor will not allocate to a tokenised fund that operates on proprietary infrastructure incompatible with their custody provider, prime broker, and reporting systems. Standards solve this by creating a shared language that every participant in the ecosystem can speak.
 
Three layers of standardisation define the tokenisation stack:
 

• Token standards: How assets are represented — ERC-20, ERC-721, ERC-1400, ERC-3643, and now ERC-7540 for funds.
• Compliance standards: How transfer restrictions, KYC verification, and jurisdictional rules are encoded and enforced.
• Interoperability standards: How assets move across chains, interact with DeFi protocols, and integrate with traditional financial infrastructure.

Most ERC-20 tokens assume instant, atomic transactions. You send, the recipient receives, the transfer is final. That model works for simple tokens. It breaks for funds.
 
Fund operations are inherently asynchronous. A subscription request is not fulfilled instantly — it requires NAV calculation, compliance verification, and capital allocation before shares are issued. Redemptions similarly require processing time. Traditional fund infrastructure handles this through manual workflows and T+2 or longer settlement. Blockchain needed a standard that captures this reality natively.
 
ERC-7540 delivers that standard. Developed through Ethereum’s EIP process with significant contributions from Centrifuge, it extends the ERC-4626 tokenised vault standard with asynchronous deposit and redemption mechanics.
 

How ERC-7540 Works

The standard introduces a request-fulfil pattern for fund interactions:
 

1. Request: An investor submits a subscription or redemption request through the smart contract. The request is logged but not immediately executed.
2. Processing: The fund manager (or an automated system) processes pending requests — calculating NAV, verifying compliance, checking liquidity, and determining allocation.
3. Fulfilment: Once processed, the contract fulfils the request. New shares are minted for subscriptions. Underlying assets are returned for redemptions. The investor claims their tokens or proceeds.

 
This pattern mirrors how traditional funds operate while keeping the entire workflow onchain. Every request, every processing step, every fulfilment is recorded transparently on the blockchain.
 

Why This Matters for Institutional Adoption

Institutional investors and their service providers — custodians, administrators, auditors — operate within defined workflows. They cannot adopt infrastructure that requires them to abandon those workflows entirely. ERC-7540 meets them where they are.
 
A tokenised fund built on ERC-7540 is compatible with:
 

• Existing NAV calculation processes (the standard does not dictate pricing methodology)
• Compliance gates (KYC/AML checks can be integrated into the request-fulfilment pipeline)
• Custody infrastructure (tokens are standard ERC-20 compatible, working with any Ethereum-compatible custodian)
• DeFi composability (fulfilled positions can interact with lending protocols, DEXs, and structured products)

 
That last point is where ERC-7540 creates compounding value. A tokenised Treasury fund built on this standard can serve simultaneously as a yield-bearing position for the investor and as collateral in a DeFi lending protocol. The same token. Two functions. No additional infrastructure required.

Centrifuge did not just adopt ERC-7540. They helped build it.
 
Since 2017, Centrifuge has been at the frontier of real-world asset tokenisation. They originated onchain credit before the term “RWA” entered the mainstream vocabulary. They co-founded the Tokenized Asset Coalition — a cross-industry body bringing together protocols, asset managers, and infrastructure providers to coordinate on standards and advocacy. They launched the Real-World Asset Summit, creating the forum where institutional and crypto-native participants converge.
 
ERC-7540 emerged directly from Centrifuge’s operational experience. Years of building tokenised credit pools, managing investor flows, and navigating the gap between DeFi composability and institutional requirements shaped the standard’s design. It is not a theoretical specification. It is codified operational wisdom.

Identity and Compliance Layers

Tokenised assets that interact with regulated entities need robust identity infrastructure. Solutions like ERC-3643 (the T-REX standard) and onchain identity protocols enable permissioned transfers where KYC verification is embedded at the token level. An investor’s compliance status travels with their wallet, not with each individual transaction.
 
This is critical for cross-border flows. A tokenised fund share issued in Luxembourg needs to verify that a buyer in Singapore meets both jurisdictions’ requirements — automatically, without manual intervention.
 

Oracle Infrastructure

Tokenised real-world assets require reliable price feeds, NAV data, and event triggers from the off-chain world. Oracle networks — Chainlink, Chronicle, Pyth — provide this bridge. The quality and reliability of oracle infrastructure directly determines the trustworthiness of onchain asset valuations.
 
For tokenised funds, oracle integration goes beyond price feeds. Interest rate updates, corporate action notifications, collateral valuations, and credit events all need reliable off-chain-to-onchain pathways.
 

Cross-Chain Interoperability

Tokenised assets will not live on a single blockchain. Treasuries might settle on Ethereum. Private credit pools might operate on Centrifuge Chain. Equities might trade on regulated DLT platforms. The infrastructure connecting these environments — bridges, messaging protocols, shared settlement layers — determines whether the tokenised ecosystem functions as a unified market or a collection of isolated silos.
 
Projects like Chainlink CCIP, LayerZero, and Wormhole are building the connective tissue. But cross-chain security remains an active area of development, and institutional participants demand higher assurance than current bridge architectures uniformly provide.
 

Custody and Key Management

Institutional custody for tokenised assets is evolving rapidly. Firms like Fireblocks, Anchorage, and Komainu offer regulated custody solutions that meet institutional requirements for segregation, insurance, and operational security. Multi-party computation (MPC) and hardware security modules (HSMs) replace the single-key vulnerability that characterised early crypto custody.
 
The custody layer is where onchain asset management meets institutional compliance. Without trusted custody, institutional allocation to tokenised assets remains theoretical.

We operate at the liquidity layer. Our infrastructure connects to 85+ venues across 37 countries, providing continuous market-making for tokenised assets.
 
From this vantage point, we see the infrastructure gaps in real time. Fragmented liquidity across chains. Inconsistent token standards that complicate cross-venue trading. Settlement mismatches between DeFi-native and institutional workflows. These are the problems that standards like ERC-7540 and infrastructure like ours are built to solve.
 
Kevin de Patoul, our CEO, frames it clearly: liquidity is not a feature. It is the infrastructure that turns tokenised assets from balance-sheet positions into tradeable markets. The path to trillions in tokenised assets runs directly through the infrastructure layer.

The infrastructure roadmap for tokenised finance has three horizons:
 
Near-term (2025–2026): Broad adoption of ERC-7540 for tokenised fund products. Institutional custodians integrating onchain settlement into existing workflows. Regulatory sandboxes maturing into permanent frameworks.
 
Medium-term (2026–2028): Cross-chain interoperability reaching institutional-grade reliability. Unified identity and compliance layers enabling seamless cross-border flows. Secondary markets for tokenised alternatives reaching meaningful depth.
 
Long-term (2028+): Full integration of tokenised and traditional financial infrastructure. A single settlement layer — or a network of interoperable layers — handling equities, bonds, credit, and alternatives with the same programmability and transparency. The great tokenization shift reaches its conclusion: not a parallel system, but the system.

• The Great Tokenization Shift: 2025 and the Road Ahead
• Tokenised US Treasuries: Rebuilding the $29T Market on Blockchain Rails
• Onchain Asset Management: How Blockchain Is Reshaping Fund Operations