Bank of Canada Completes Tokenized Bond Pilot, Warns Adoption Will Be Slow

The Bank of Canada has completed its Project Samara, a blockchain experiment that issued Canada's first tokenized bond on a distributed ledger platform. The pilot found operational efficiency gains but warned that broader adoption 'will likely be slow' due to integration challenges and regulatory gaps.

Export Development Canada (EDC) issued a single three-month CA$100 million bond to a closed investor group on the Samara Platform, with TD Bank serving as joint lead manager. The BoC built Samara on Hyperledger Fabric to handle the full bond lifecycle, including issuance, bidding, coupon payments, redemptions, and secondary trading.

The experiment integrated separate bond and cash ledgers, enabling instant settlement and on-chain secondary market trading. However, the BoC acknowledged that benefits such as operational efficiency gains and reduced counterparty risk were 'partially offset' by increased system complexity and liquidity costs.