Market infrastructure
Eight barriers between a pilot and a functioning market
OECD's framework for why technical issuance alone does not create a durable tokenized-asset ecosystem.
Key findings
- Limited liquidity and the absence of a full ecosystem can reinforce each other.
- Large-scale benefits remain difficult to evidence where adoption and network effects are limited.
- Payment rails, custody, interoperability, identification, standards, accounting, and legal recognition remain material dependencies.
Practical meaning
- Analyze the full lifecycle: issuance, payment, settlement, custody, servicing, transfer, reporting, redemption, and insolvency.
- A technically functional token can still fail operationally or legally at any connection between those stages.
Liquidity and ecosystem
Issuers may wait for investors while investors wait for liquid supply, custody, settlement, and reliable servicing. A critical mass of connected participants matters as much as token issuance.
Off-chain dependencies
Custodians can connect records and assets, reduce duplicate tokenization risk, and support safeguarding. Their own regulation, reconciliation, and insolvency treatment must still be assessed.
Standards and law
Identification, messaging, token identifiers, cross-chain interoperability, accounting treatment, property recognition, smart-contract status, and settlement finality can all affect enforceability and operations.
Limitations
- The OECD paper is a cross-market policy analysis, not a product audit.
- The significance of each barrier varies by architecture and jurisdiction.
What this source does not establish
- That DLT cannot improve markets
- That any specific architecture solves the barriers
- Regulatory approval
Full source citations
Evidence used
Tokenisation of assets and distributed ledger technologies in financial markets
OECD · 2025-01-09 · policy paperPDF pp. 5-6: contents and executive summary; PDF pp. 10-13: liquidity, ecosystem scale, and investment rationale; PDF pp. 14-17: payment rails and settlement; PDF pp. 17-20: custody, interoperability, identity, standards, accounting, and legal issues; PDF pp. 21-22: technology-neutral policy considerations
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