Clearstream Launches D7 DLT to Bring Regulated Securities Issuance Onto Blockchain (BS-S45)

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On Tuesday, Clearstream launched D7 DLT, a new platform that enables issuers to create and manage securities directly onchain, while remaining fully compliant with Europe’s Central Securities Depository Regulation (CSDR). The system extends Clearstream’s existing D7 platform — used for fully digital securities issuance, processing, and custody — by adding native blockchain infrastructure to it.

“The D7 Digital segment has been live for over two years now with two million issuances worth €44 billion, now we added the tokenization part: D7 DLT,” said Thilo Derenbach, Head of Sales & BD, Digital Securities Services at Clearstream.

With around €21 trillion in assets under custody, Clearstream ranks among the world’s largest post-trade market infrastructures, providing settlement, custody, and collateral management across more than 60 markets. As part of Deutsche Börse Group, it has made tokenization a core pillar of its capital-markets digitalization strategy, offering crypto custody and taking part in the ECB’s 2024 DLT trials.

We spoke with Derenbach about why D7 DLT focuses on the issuance side first, and how quickly Clearstream aims to build a fully onchain market infrastructure.

On why Clearstream built D7 DLT

“Our job as a financial market infrastructure is to serve the entire market.

Some issuers are already comfortable with blockchain and want to issue and manage securities directly onchain. Others prefer to stay within the systems they know. With D7, they can choose: digital or tokenized, same Clearstream reliability.

We built the platform together with Google Cloud on Hyperledger Besu. That gives us scale, security, and full integration into our regulated environment. In short, it brings tokenized issuance into the same trusted framework as any traditional CSD service.”

On why Clearstream is focusing on issuers first

“Right now, the main benefits are on the issuer side, at least in institutional trading.

That’s because for professional investors, adoption depends on scale, liquidity, and collateral mobility. These are advantages that only emerge once enough assets are issued onchain. That’s why this first phase focuses on issuers: they create the inventory and liquidity foundation the investment side will build on later.

And why should issuers care? Because going digital dramatically cuts time to market. Structured-product issuers can launch new certificates within minutes instead of days. The agility of the D7 platform has already driven more than 20 percent growth in these structured product issuance volumes for Clearstream. When you can react to markets in real time, that’s a big edge.”

On how to go fully onchain

“The next step is to bring not just the issuance, but also settlement and custody onto DLT.

For that, both the asset leg and the cash leg need to exist on the same infrastructure. On the cash side, we’re preparing for settlement in wholesale CBDC once ECB’s Pontes goes live, and we’re integrating with regulated stablecoins like USDC and EURC through our partnership with Circle.

Once both legs are on DLT, we can enable true delivery-versus-payment onchain, using regulated forms of digital money.”

On the long-term roadmap toward a fully digital CSD

“Our ambition is to operate as a fully digital central securities depository, capable of managing both traditional and tokenized assets within a unified infrastructure.

Over the next 18 months, we aim to reach an MVP level of feature parity with our existing post-trade processes, which means that we can offer a sufficient level of core functionality on DLT as we do today in traditional systems. After that, adoption will depend on market readiness and liquidity growth.

A big driver will be collateral management: once digital assets can move instantly across entities and jurisdictions, efficiency jumps, and that’s when large-scale adoption follows.