Tokenization arrives onchain for institutions — AMA recap with Redbelly Network

From experiments to an endorsed infrastructure

The discussion began with an overview of the state of institutional tokenization. Over the past two years, administrators, asset servicers and central banks have moved from lab pilots to production-grade initiatives. For Redbelly, the focus is on regulated markets and private credit, where much of the infrastructure still runs on siloed databases and manual processes.

Burt explained that Redbelly set out to bring “all the lovely things we like in permissionless DeFi” to regulated environments, with an identity and custody layer that enables collateral mobility under existing rules. He pointed to private credit and alternative assets as a starting point, where tokenization can structure workflows and prepare assets for broader distribution over time.

Andersen added that for AMAL and IQ-EQ, tokenization has shifted from an innovation theme to a board-level agenda: “Tokenization is no longer treated as a moonshot experiment, but a strategic infrastructure upgrade that C-suite and board committees are actively exploring.”

Project Acacia: smart ABS and CBDC settlement on a public chain

A central part of the AMA focused on Project Acacia, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s CBDC pilot, where Redbelly and AMAL/IQ-EQ implemented a smart asset-backed security (ABS). The goal was to show how tokenized assets and wholesale CBDC can simplify issuance, servicing, reporting and secondary trading.

Burt walked through the current flow in securitization: an originator runs a loan book, a bank provides warehouse funding and a trustee then manages payments to multiple investor tranches. Each party maintains separate systems and reconciles data every month. In Project Acacia, the underlying loans, the ABS structure and secondary trading all moved to a shared infrastructure.

“What this allowed us to do is connect the originator, the warehouse and the trustee on a single source of truth, and then add secondary trading on the Australian Bond Exchange,” Burt said. “You know exactly what you’re holding and can see through to the underlying assets before you price or impair it.”

Andersen described the pilot as a proof point for the trustee’s role in tokenized markets, showing how fiduciary oversight and digital execution can coexist. Securitization still relies on trust law and investor protection, but tokenization compresses timelines, reduces manual breakpoints and replaces document-driven flows with embedded rules, eligibility checks and deterministic settlement.

Deterministic finality, zkIdentity and a shared control layer

The AMA then turned to infrastructure requirements and risk management. For institutions, throughput alone is not enough; they need predictable costs, audit-ready accountability and guarantees that every transaction resolves in a single, irreversible state.

Burt explained Redbelly’s deterministic consensus and fixed gas model, which are designed for capital markets workloads. All validator nodes propose transactions to each other and agree on a combined “super block” before it is committed, which removes forks and reorganizes risk. This approach, developed through research at the University of Sydney and the CSIRO, Australia’s national research lab and backed by a patent, has been benchmarked at over 97,000 transactions per second with zero transaction loss under stress tests.

“We believe settlement is the core competency of the network,” Burt said. “Institutions need to know that once a block is created, there are no rollbacks, and that each transaction executes in the right sequence.”

Both speakers highlighted Redbelly’s zkIdentity system as another key piece. Rather than duplicating KYC and eligibility checks at every venue, users receive verifiable credentials that prove, in zero-knowledge, that they meet requirements for a given product or jurisdiction. Eligibility is checked at the network layer, while underlying data remains private and issuers still operate within their licences.

For AMAL/IQ-EQ, this addresses a structural compliance problem. Andersen noted: “zkIdentity lets us verify eligibility at the network layer without exposing private data, which enables regulated markets to operate on public rails while keeping controls and safeguards in place.”

The partnership between Redbelly and AMAL/IQ-EQ combines this technical foundation with existing licences, balance sheet strength and established transaction flows. AMAL Trustees brings the fiduciary role, legal enforceability and reporting obligations; Redbelly provides the shared ledger, deterministic settlement and identity layer. Together, they position tokenization as an upgrade to the way asset lifecycles are managed and funded.