Canadian government and TD Bank successfully pilot $100 million CAD bond issuance using Hyperledger Fabric tech

The Bank of Canada (BoC) has completed its tokenization pilot called Project Samara, which aimed to evaluate the role of blockchain technology for improving government bond issuance and settlement.

As part of the experiment, the government-run trade finance unit Export Development Canada issued the first tokenized bond in Canada settled in wholesale central bank deposits. The bond’s lifecycle will play out on the Samara Platform.

Together with TD Bank and the Royal Bank of Canada’s markets and investor services units, the BoC’s "limited experiment" tested the feasibility of issuing a single three-month $100 million Canadian dollar-denominated bond security to a "closed investor group."

Samara was built using Hyperledger Fabric to manage bond issuances, bidding, coupon payments, redemptions, and secondary trading.

In the release, the BoC notes Samara found operational efficiency gains, improvements to data integrity, and reduced counterparty and settlement risk. Some of these improvements were "partially offset" by increased system complexity, liquidity costs, and gaps in the current regulatory framework.

"Despite technical feasibility, broader adoption will likely be slow due to several factors, such as integration challenges and limited appetite for core infrastructure changes," the announcement reads.

Samara built on findings from the BoC’s Jasper project, launched in 2016 in collaboration with Payments Canada and private sector partners to test distributed ledgers for wholesale interbank payments and securities settlement.

"Project Samara shows how the public sector and industry can work together to harness innovation in the payment ecosystem," BoC Executive Director, Payments, Supervision and Oversight, Ron Morrow said. "The Project allowed us to understand the real-world benefits and challenges of tokenization in capital markets. The Bank welcomes further collaboration in this fast-developing area and will continue to play a role as enabler of innovation in payments that serve Canadians."

Canada's 2025 federal budget unveiled plans to establish new regulations for fiat-pegged stablecoins. Unlike the semi-independent Federal Reserve in the U.S., the Bank of Canada is fully owned by the Canadian federal government.