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

The Bank of Canada (BoC) completed Project Samara, a tokenization pilot assessing blockchain's role in government bond issuance and settlement. As part of this experiment, Export Development Canada issued Canada's first tokenized bond, settled in wholesale central bank deposits, with its lifecycle managed on the Samara Platform built with Hyperledger Fabric. The limited experiment, conducted with TD Bank and RBC, tested issuing a three-month, $100 million CAD bond to a closed investor group, covering issuance, bidding, payments, and secondary trading.

The BoC found operational efficiency gains, improved data integrity, and reduced settlement risk, though these benefits were partially offset by increased system complexity, liquidity costs, and regulatory gaps. Broader adoption is expected to be slow due to integration challenges and limited appetite for core infrastructure changes. Project Samara builds upon the earlier Jasper project and demonstrates how public and private sectors can innovate in the payment ecosystem, according to BoC Executive Director Ron Morrow.

(Source：The Block)