Poland’s second-largest bank, Bank Pekao, is using blockchain technology to preserve the country’s cultural heritage. 

According to a Pekao press release, the bank partnered with Aleph Zero to launch Archiv3, a project aimed at tokenizing Polish artwork and securely storing it for future generations.

Tokenization is the process of turning physical assets, like art, into digital tokens on a blockchain, making them easier to store and track. 

For this project, Bank Pekao is digitizing famous Polish artworks, like those by Jan Matejko and Stanisław Wyspiański, using advanced 3D scanning technology. These digital versions are then stored as non-fungible tokens on the eco-friendly Aleph Zero blockchain, ensuring their long-term preservation.

Arctic World Archive

The tokenized artwork will also be archived in the Arctic World Archive, a facility in Svalbard, Norway, designed to protect important data from threats like cyberattacks and natural disasters. The AWA is known for storing cultural and scientific data from organizations like UNESCO and the Vatican, according to an Archiv3 release.

The bank hopes that by using a decentralized ledger, the artworks will remain safe and accessible for future generations, even in the event of a global catastrophe.

This initiative reflects a broader trend of integrating traditional banking with modern technologies like blockchain, opening new avenues for digital asset management.

Earlier, on Oct 2, Christie’s announced plans to use blockchain technology to issue blockchain-based ownership certificates for art sold at auction.

Australia’s ANZ Bank is partnering with the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Chainlink Labs, and ADDX to explore tokenized assets and blockchain interoperability.

ANZ Bank, one of Australia’s “Big Four” banks, has become the first Australian bank to join Project Guardian, an initiative by the Monetary Authority of Singapore aimed at exploring how real-world assets can be represented as digital tokens on blockchains, according to a press release from ANZ.

This move allows ANZ to work with Chainlink Labs (LINK) and ADDX to test the exchange of tokenized assets, such as commercial paper, between private blockchains.

ANZ adopted Chainlink’s cross-chain interoperability protocol to simulate tokenized asset purchases. This move followed insights from the Swift blockchain interoperability project started in June.

Tokenization refers to the process of turning traditional assets, like money market funds, into digital tokens that can be used on blockchain networks. It converts real assets into digital tokens, allowing them to be traded more easily, like stocks or cryptocurrencies. 

ANZ aims to determine whether these digital versions of real-world assets can move more efficiently and securely across different blockchain networks. The bank hopes this will help improve how money and goods flow across the Asia-Pacific region.

Interoperability 

Tokenized assets often face interoperability issues, meaning different blockchains can’t easily communicate. Interoperability is a barrier to tokenization, often creating isolated networks that don’t inherently communicate with each other.

ANZ plans to use its experience with digital assets, such as its Australian Dollar stablecoin, to help customers navigate this evolving digital finance landscape.

According to the release, Project Guardian, launched in 2022, promotes collaboration between regulators and the financial industry to enhance liquidity and efficiency in financial markets through tokenization.

Maelstrom, a decentralization-focused venture firm managed by the family office of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, announced in a press release Thursday that Jon Atack (GitHub profile) is the second recipient of its Bitcoin Grant Program, to continue his research and development work. According to a bio, Atack started contributing to Bitcoin Core in 2019 and recently was made a maintainer and editor of the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) repository. “Bitcoin isn’t perfect,” Atack said in the press release. “Among other things, it needs further decentralization, continued vigilance, review, bug-fixing, updates, maintenance and improved robustness, performance, privacy, scaling, documentation and user experience.” Maestrom awarded its first developer grant earlier this month, after unveiling the program in July. The goal is to fund open-source Bitcoin developers, since unlike many newer crypto projects, Bitcoin has no single company or foundation driving the strategy or providing top-down funding.