Introduction

In a year when the importance of DLT and digital assets has risen to new heights, 2024 has been a massive year in the evolution journey of this new technology. If 2023 was the year of stabilisation (after the challenges of 2022), this year must be characterized as the year that DLT has gone 'deeper, not wider'.

Whilst the volume of press releases and proof of concepts has declined, many of the key, business metrics of DLT have improved significantly over the last twelve months.

We have seen a record year for native, institutional digital asset issuance with over USD 4 billion issued in the last year - bringing the total to more than USD 16 billion so far.

We have seen over USD 4 trillion in monthly, transactional liquidity across key tokenisation platforms and over USD 800 million in subscriptions to tokenised funds.

Regulators have helped to move the market forward not only through new guidelines (such as the BIS' SC060, providing valuable clarity around how to distinguish the treatment of tokenised assets from crypto-assets) but they have provided a bedrock of experimentation and development on which markets are now building (such as the ECB DLT trials, the Global Layer 1 initiative, the HKMA's Project Evergreen, Brazil's Digital Real, the Swiss National Bank's Project Helvetia, etc.).

New forms of digital cash (and payments) have entered the mainstream, providing an essential funding leg to match every digital security transaction and enable truly seamless delivery-versus-payment.

And most importantly, the levels of business cooperation between providers has never been greater. Firms are spending real resources now to connect disparate and isolated pools of digital liquidity, building a coherent, global digital asset ecosystem one step at a time - particularly in the areas of collateral, fund distribution and private markets.

As this year's research highlights, we must not fall into the trap of thinking that this progress brings us within only a few years of a tipping point. In an era of total focus on business benefit, DLT and digital assets are now 'paying their way' and delivering a growing range of P&L improvements to firms across the capital markets space.

We are extremely grateful to the 354 teams and departments that have made this year's fifth, annual "DLT in the Real World" survey a success. Our ability to chart the continuing evolution of this technology relies entirely on the insights and perspectives shared by industry leaders. We strongly recognise the generous commitment that digital specialists across the world have made in contributing to this report.

We sincerely hope that this report (and the data that supports it) can play a valuable role in your own case for digital transformation - and please do reach out if ever you would like to dig further into any of the findings in this report.