Author: BUBBLE
On August 8, 2025, CMB International, a subsidiary of China Merchants Bank, announced a partnership with the Singapore digital exchange DigiFT and the Solana public chain service provider OnChain to tokenize a dollar money market fund recognized in both Hong Kong and Singapore, issuing the token CMBMINT on-chain. Notably, this is the first tokenized fund to appear across multiple jurisdictions, and its issuance led by a giant in Asian finance will serve as a good compliance sample for future multi-region cooperation on RWA.
By August 13, Solana's official announcement also confirmed that Solana was the first chain for the fund tokenization launch, marking the first tokenized public fund product on the Solana public chain, and the market has responded positively. In the past 24 hours, Solana's price increased by 15%, and within three hours after the announcement, Solana's price rose another 5%, breaking the $200 barrier.
This article will interpret how the institutional network behind this cooperation operates, CMB International's blockchain layout and ambitions, as well as the investment contents included in the on-chain fund CMBMINT.
How was Solana's first on-chain fund realized?
Behind this fund tokenization project, various forces from traditional finance and blockchain sectors have converged. CMB International Asset Management provides quality fund assets and regulatory compliance guarantees, DigiFT provides the on-chain issuance and trading platform, and OnChain is responsible for underlying technology deployment and public chain distribution support. The three parties work together to achieve the on-chain issuance of traditional money market funds.
The tokenized asset is the CMB International dollar money market fund (CMBMINT), a dollar-denominated money fund established in February 2024, with 70% of the funds invested in low-volatility instruments such as short-term high-quality dollar deposits, treasury bills, and commercial paper, and 30% of the funds invested in short-term deposits and high-quality money market instruments denominated in currencies other than the dollar, overall pursuing capital preservation and stable returns.
Since its establishment, the fund has performed excellently, ranking first in Bloomberg's Asia-Pacific similar money market funds as of July 31, 2025. As it is a Hong Kong-Singapore mutual recognition fund, the fund is subject to supervision from both regions, and its investor positioning is for qualified professional investors. Therefore, the project initially limits subscriptions for fund tokens to recognized investors in Singapore through the DigiFT platform to ensure that participants meet local regulatory requirements (in the future, depending on the level of regulatory openness, it may expand to institutional clients in Hong Kong and other jurisdictions).
The annualized yield for various shares remains above 4%, source: CMB International website.
With the collaboration between DigiFT and OnChain, this money market fund has completed the on-chain mapping and distribution of real assets. Specifically, DigiFT, as a licensed exchange, issues tokens linked to the fund's net value, with each token representing a certain share of the fund, granting holders corresponding rights to profits. Notably, this issuance has pioneered the multi-chain deployment of public fund tokens; in addition to Solana, CMBMINT tokens will subsequently be deployed on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Plume Network across four blockchains.
OnChain has embedded the entire tokenization process within its independently developed on-chain capital market infrastructure, providing comprehensive technical support. Firstly, in terms of compliance architecture and asset tokenization security, OnChain has introduced a 'transfer hook' mechanism based on the Solana Token-2022 standard to ensure that fund tokens can only be redeemed through contracts, eliminating private transfers and thereby strengthening trading compliance.
At the same time, it adopts a dual standard architecture of SPL and Token-2022, ensuring compatibility with other on-chain assets while possessing flexible liquidity programming capabilities, and avoids traditional fund settlement delays through a real-time net value anchoring mechanism. Secondly, in the subscription and redemption phases, OnChain has established a full-link security protection system, isolating permissions to separate core functions such as fund management, liquidity pools, and token minting into different PDA addresses to prevent single-point risks. It enforces strict restrictions on key operators through a whitelist mechanism, including fund company access and large transaction approvals. Real-time asset and permission scanning, dual net value calculations, and net value update time limits are introduced throughout the entire link to ensure price stability and account accuracy.
Finally, in liquidity management, OnChain has designed a layered liquidity structure, with an independent redemption pool (redeem_cash_pool) specifically to meet immediate redemption needs and avoid liquidity runs; it also offers both instant and delayed redemption modes, intelligently adjusting according to the liquidity status in the pool, and ensuring principal safety even under extreme market conditions through a multi-account asset isolation mechanism, achieving an almost T+0 fund arrival experience.
As the on-chain version of the Hong Kong-Singapore mutual recognition fund, CMBMINT adopts an innovative and robust model in its regulatory compliance framework. The fund itself remains under the supervision of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (through the mutual recognition mechanism), while the issuance and trading of tokens occur on the platform of the licensed institution DigiFT in Singapore. This 'dual regulatory' framework ensures that both the underlying assets and the trading environment are legally compliant. At the same time, the smart contracts for the fund tokens have undergone strict security audits, and mechanisms for risk reserves and Proof of Reserve have been introduced to ensure the safety, transparency, and full support of on-chain assets.
CMB International's blockchain layout
As a state-owned traditional financial institution, CMB International is among the early players in the blockchain industry. It has constructed its blockchain relationship network through investments, funds, and business cooperation. These early explorations have not only won it industry advantages but also laid the groundwork for obtaining virtual asset licenses and launching on-chain funds and other innovative businesses in the future. From underlying technology, public chain ecosystems, to decentralized finance and virtual asset services, CMB International's blockchain journey can be described as comprehensive and in-depth.
Underlying Technology Investment (2017-2018)
CMB International's earliest involvement in the blockchain field can be traced back to the end of 2017. At that time, it participated in the Pre-A round financing of the Chinese blockchain technology startup 'Cryptape'. Cryptape was founded by a former core developer of Ethereum, focusing on underlying blockchain technology research and development. It developed the enterprise-level chain architecture CITA and open-sourced the code in July 2017. CITA pioneered a blockchain architecture combining 'microservices + logical nodes', significantly enhancing the performance and scalability of the blockchain network.
Not long after, in July 2018, CMB International invested in the Chinese star public chain project Nervos Network. Nervos is a public chain ecosystem with a layered architecture, dedicated to solving the scalability problem of blockchain. Notably, CMB International not only provided funding but also facilitated collaboration exploration between the invested project and the China Merchants Bank system: for example, Nervos and the Cryptape team assisted China Merchants Bank in developing an open permissioned chain using alliance chain technology to meet financial business needs.
Ecological Fund and Diversified Expansion (2019-2022)
After initially mastering the underlying public chain, CMB International accelerated its investment pace in the blockchain application ecosystem. Since 2019, its investment team has deeply researched blockchain application directions such as payment clearing, tokenization, and identity verification, and has explored decentralized finance (DeFi) service solutions with institutions like the Nervos Foundation, fostering broader cooperation opportunities.
In May 2021, CMB International and Nervos officially jointly initiated a blockchain ecological fund 'InNervation' with a total of 50 million USD, aiming to invest in blockchain startups with practical application prospects globally within three years. The fund focuses on DApps, DeFi protocols, NFT platforms, and Layer 1/Layer 2 infrastructure based on Nervos and related ecosystems, providing funding support ranging from approximately 200,000 to 2 million USD for early-stage projects.
In addition to the public chain ecosystem, CMB International also continues to focus on alliance chains and enterprise service areas. In July 2022, the blockchain infrastructure provider 'Rivtower' completed a Pre-B round financing of several tens of millions of RMB, with CMB International continuing to invest as an existing shareholder. Rivtower was formed by a domestic open-source alliance chain technology team and developed the world's first cloud-native blockchain framework CITA-Cloud, providing underlying technical support for the industrial internet and government-enterprise markets. CMB International's continuous follow-up investments in its A+ and Pre-B rounds indicate its long-term optimism about the blockchain underlying infrastructure track and further consolidates its influence in the domestic alliance chain/Web3 infrastructure circle.
Exploration of Virtual Asset Services (2022-2025)
As the integration of blockchain and financial applications gradually advances, CMB International has begun to explore new fields of digital asset and fintech integration in recent years. Between 2022 and 2023, CMB International has repeatedly acted as the exclusive placing agent for Hong Kong listed company Arta TechFin (279.HK), assisting it in completing stock issuance and convertible bond issuance financing. Arta TechFin, founded by Zheng Zhigang, Vice Chairman of New World Group in Hong Kong, aims to connect Web2 and Web3 using new technologies such as blockchain, providing high-end financial services that integrate virtual and traditional assets. Its products include Arta Wallet, a wallet and custody platform utilizing top global security technology, and Arta STO, a regulated digital securities issuance platform based on blockchain.
These forward-looking investments have also earned CMB International recognition from regulatory authorities. On July 14, 2025, CMB International Securities Limited officially received approval from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission to become the first Chinese bank-affiliated brokerage firm in Hong Kong to obtain a virtual asset trading service license. This means that CMB International can legally provide trading services for qualified investors, including cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, expanding its business scope from traditional stocks to the digital asset field.
U.S. public chains join hands with Chinese institutions; who is behind this 'century cooperation'?
Behind the successful realization of this cross-border on-chain fund, two key institutions, DigiFT and OnChain, are worth noting—one connects with CMB International through regulatory compliance, and the other focuses on public chain technology issuance support connecting with public chains like Solana. Who are they exactly?
DigiFT: Pioneer of Compliant On-Chain Exchanges
DigiFT is a fintech company founded in Singapore in 2021, dedicated to building a compliant + decentralized parallel on-chain digital asset exchange. Its founder Henry Zhang has a senior banking background, which has led DigiFT to prioritize regulatory compliance from the very beginning.
Henry Zhang has nearly 13 years of senior executive experience in foreign banks in the Chinese-speaking region, source: LinkedIn.
DigiFT is the world's first on-chain trading platform recognized by the Monetary Authority of Singapore as a Registered Market Operator (RMO) and holding a Capital Markets Services (CMS) license. With this dual license, DigiFT can legally provide on-chain security token issuance and trading services to qualified investors. In terms of technological innovation, DigiFT was the first to launch the world's first compliant on-chain Automated Market Maker (AMM) mechanism, combining the efficiency of decentralized trading with traditional regulatory requirements. Additionally, the platform has issued some of the world's first tokenized U.S. Treasury bond depository receipts, demonstrating the feasibility of bringing real financial assets into the DeFi realm.
In 2025, DigiFT also obtained a digital asset custody license from the Monetary Authority of Singapore, extending its business scope to compliant custody services, further enhancing its end-to-end RWA solution capabilities. In this CMBMINT project, DigiFT plays the role of issuer and exchange: issuing tokens linked to the fund's net value and providing qualified investors with subscription, trading, and redemption channels through its own platform.
In fact, prior to this collaboration, DigiFT had already completed multiple RWA tokenization collaborations. In February 2025, DigiFT partnered with Invesco to launch a $630 million tokenized private credit fund (iSNR), deployed on the Arbitrum chain, supporting USDC/USDT subscriptions and expanding to Plume Network. In March 2025, it launched two tokenized index funds tracking AI stocks (such as Apple, Tesla) and major crypto assets. DigiFT, as UBS's on-chain tokenization distribution partner, supports products like uMINT (dollar money market fund) and collaborated with KuCoin this year to use uMINT as collateral on the platform. Additionally, they have engaged in varying degrees of cooperation in the tokenization of real assets with institutions and projects such as HashKey Capital, FundBridge, Wellington Management, Libeara, Chainlink, IOST, WSPN, GSR, and more.
It is precisely because DigiFT possesses mature compliance operating experience and innovative on-chain trading technology that CMB International can confidently entrust the management of fund token issuance and circulation to them. Traditional institutions are responsible for asset and compliance oversight, while innovative platforms focus on technological implementation and market liquidity, each displaying their strengths.
OnChain: Technology Driver for RWA
OnChain is a fintech company focused on global asset on-chain allocation, with core team members from both traditional finance and blockchain backgrounds, including founders of Nasdaq-listed companies, executives from trillion-dollar asset management firms, and former executives from global TOP5 exchanges. The core team graduated from renowned universities such as Peking University and Columbia University, and has extensive experience in blockchain, smart contracts, and digital asset management, having previously worked at Goldman Sachs, ByteDance, Tencent, and other institutions.
Leveraging support from top institutions such as CMB International (CMBI), UBS, and Invesco, we provide on-chain investment solutions covering money market funds, bond funds, and non-standard fixed income products, while planning future support for global ETFs and mainstream stock market investments, promoting deep integration of traditional finance and the on-chain ecosystem.
The Era of RWA for Major Institutions
An increasing number of institutions collaborating with on-chain projects reflects a trend: only when the forces of regulation, assets, and technology combine can RWA projects truly land and succeed. From a broader perspective, Asian financial institutions (Hong Kong's new policies, Singapore's sandbox) are building a stage for such cross-border blockchain innovations. In the future, as more traditional giants connect with blockchain innovation enterprises, we have reason to expect more cooperation across markets and technology fields, pushing real-world assets on-chain towards maturity and bringing new possibilities for the globalization of financial markets.
