- Brickken Joins Linux Foundation Group to Advance Tokenised-Asset Standards
Brickken has joined Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust as the tokenisation infrastructure provider seeks to promote common technical standards for digital financial assets and the emerging use of autonomous software agents in capital markets.
The Barcelona-based company said its membership would allow it to contribute practical experience from deploying tokenised assets and participate in open-source work covering asset interfaces, verifiable claims and delegated authority.
The move comes as banks, asset managers and financial-market infrastructure providers explore how blockchain-based systems can be used to issue, manage and transfer conventional assets.
While tokenisation has attracted significant interest, institutional adoption has been constrained by fragmented systems and the absence of widely accepted technical standards.
Platforms, custodians, registrars and counterparties frequently use different methods to record ownership, permissions, claims and the authority to act on behalf of asset holders.
This can require institutions to build bespoke connections whenever they seek to move assets or information across systems, increasing cost and creating operational friction.
Brickken said open standards could provide a common framework that financial institutions and technology providers could adopt, test and improve collectively.
The need for common rules may become more urgent as artificial intelligence and other autonomous software systems begin executing instructions involving financial assets.
Edwin Mata, Brickken’s chief executive and co-founder, said the company wanted to help build infrastructure that allowed software to participate in financial markets within clearly defined limits.
“Brickken is joining LF Decentralized Trust because its mission perfectly aligns with our vision of building the infrastructure that lets software act within the financial economy responsibly, with clear authority and a verifiable record,” Mata said.
He added that membership would enable Brickken to develop the emerging “agentic layer” alongside other market participants so that it was built on open rather than proprietary foundations.
Asset tokenisation involves representing ownership rights or financial claims as digital tokens that can be recorded, transferred and managed using distributed-ledger technology.
Supporters argue that the process could reduce settlement times, automate compliance checks, divide assets into smaller units and widen investor access to markets traditionally characterised by high entry costs and manual administration.
The potential applications extend across private equity, debt securities, property, commodities and other real-world assets.
However, tokenising an asset does not by itself resolve the legal, regulatory and operational questions attached to ownership.
Institutions must still determine who has authority to issue or transfer an asset, whether an investor satisfies eligibility requirements, which claims attach to the instrument and how those rights will be recognised across different platforms and jurisdictions.
Without common standards, the market risks creating a collection of technically sophisticated but isolated systems.
Brickken’s decision to join Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust reflects a broader effort to prevent such fragmentation from becoming embedded as the market develops.
LF Decentralized Trust provides a neutral environment for collaboration on open-source technologies supporting decentralised systems and digital trust. Its technical community brings together developers, financial institutions and infrastructure providers to examine technologies intended for use across organisational boundaries.
Membership will give Brickken access to public technical meetings and collaborative projects within the LFDT ecosystem.
The company intends to assess existing projects and laboratories to identify areas where its work on asset interfaces, structured claims and delegated authority may contribute to public technical discussions.
Brickken co-authored ERC-7943, described as a Universal Real World Asset Interface designed to establish common functionality for tokenised assets.
It has also submitted two proposals through Ethereum’s public standards process.
ERC-8320, the Regulated Asset Claim proposal, focuses on the representation of claims relating to regulated assets. ERC-8226, the Regulated Agent Mandate proposal, addresses how authority may be delegated to software agents operating within financial markets.
The second proposal is particularly relevant to the development of agentic capital markets, where autonomous systems may analyse information, execute transactions or manage assets under predetermined instructions.
Such systems would require clear records of the actions an agent is permitted to perform, the duration of that authority and the party ultimately responsible for its decisions.
Brickken said it joined LFDT partly to expose its proposals to broader review by developers, institutions and infrastructure operators outside its customer network.
The company’s position is that technical standards intended to support regulated financial assets should be tested by market participants who were not involved in writing them.
That external scrutiny could help identify weaknesses, reduce the risk of one company’s commercial interests shaping the framework and improve the prospects of wider adoption.
Founded in 2020, Brickken provides infrastructure through which financial institutions, regulated companies, asset managers and enterprises can issue, administer and distribute digital financial instruments.
The company says its technology supports more than 150 institutional clients in over 40 countries and has been used in connection with more than US$660 million in tokenised assets.
Its services are delivered through its Issuer Studio, white-label infrastructure and application programming interface.
Brickken also holds ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27018 and ISO/IEC 27701 certifications, which cover information security, protection of personal data in cloud environments and privacy-information management.
Daniela Barbosa, general manager of decentralised technologies at the Linux Foundation and executive director of LF Decentralized Trust, said widespread adoption would require collaboration among different industries.
“The mainstream adoption of asset tokenization and coming opportunities around agentic trading and transactions require cross-industry collaboration on core technologies and, increasingly, standards,” Barbosa said.
She described Brickken as bringing experience in both technical standards and institutional financial markets to the LFDT community.
“Brickken has proven expertise and commitment to standards development for financial market infrastructure,” she added.
Brickken stressed that its membership of LFDT does not amount to the organisation adopting, reviewing or endorsing its standards, proposals or commercial products.
That distinction is important in a sector where association with an established open-source organisation can be interpreted as technical validation.
The proposals will still have to undergo public examination, technical criticism and broader market testing before they can secure meaningful adoption.
The commercial opportunity is nevertheless considerable. Financial institutions are increasingly interested in tokenisation, but their willingness to commit capital will depend on whether emerging platforms can meet regulatory, cybersecurity and interoperability requirements.
Closed systems may offer companies control over their products, but they can also make institutions dependent on individual vendors and complicate the transfer of assets between platforms.
Open standards could reduce that dependence while allowing regulated entities to build proprietary services on top of commonly accepted infrastructure.
Brickken’s membership gives it a place within that debate. The larger test will be whether the industry can agree on shared rules before fragmentation becomes one of the defining features of tokenised finance.
