GLEIF and Chainlink Form Strategic Partnership to Bring Institutional-Grade Identity Solution to Blockchain Industry

The Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF), the only global source of open, standardized and high-quality legal  entity reference data, and Chainlink, the industry-standard oracle platform, today  announced a strategic partnership to create an institutional-grade identity solution for  the blockchain industry. The solution combines GLEIF’s verifiable Legal Entity Identifier  (vLEI) with Chainlink’s infrastructure for Cross-Chain Identity (CCID) and Automated  Compliance Engine (ACE) to enable digital asset transactions that are verifiable,  compliant, and trusted across jurisdictions while preserving user privacy. 

While digital assets are set to transform global finance, the lack of a verifiable identity  onchain has been a key barrier to institutional adoption. By enabling verifiable identity  data to be embedded directly into onchain assets and smart contracts, Chainlink and  GLEIF are empowering institutions and tokenization platforms to seamlessly meet  compliance requirements for regulatory frameworks across the globe. This removes the  final hurdles for banks, asset managers, and institutional investors ready to implement  digital asset solutions at scale and opens up hundreds of trillions in institutional capital  to flow onchain.  

“GLEIF is thrilled to work with leading technology providers like Chainlink to give  institutions a trusted way to self-verify the identity of entities on any blockchain — from  wallets and asset issuers to smart contracts. Leveraging the LEI and vLEI, this turns  duplicative and manual compliance checks into automated, on-chain workflows. The  result is greater efficiency, reliability, and scalability for digital assets compliance. We  welcome collaboration with forward-looking partners like Chainlink seeking to embed  trusted organizational identity into their platforms and services.” — Alexandre Kech,  CEO of GLEIF.

GLEIF’s vLEI serves as the trusted issuer of verifiable credentials. These credentials can  be used to prove the legal entity behind any onchain wallet or smart contract. The vLEIs  are stored onchain as CCIDs, and can be extended to support additional credential  attributes, such as accreditation status or sanctions checks. Applications across  blockchains can use Chainlink to reference these CCIDs for real-time verification of  information about onchain assets and counterparties. Furthermore, institutions can use  Chainlink ACE to embed these credentials directly into their onchain workflows,  unlocking trusted, automated digital asset solutions that meet regulatory requirements  at global scale. 

This transformative new solution unlocks critical capabilities for realizing tokenized  finance at scale: 

• Stablecoin issuers can prove their legal identity at the contract level, ensuring  regulators, markets, and users can distinguish between genuine, reserve-backed  stablecoins and fraudulent imitations. 
• Asset issuers and smart contract applications can unlock seamless compliance  with regulations across different jurisdictions, such as Europe’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA), the U.S. Financial Data Transparency Act (FDTA), and  the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) requirements. 
• Custodians and Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs) can verify that receiving  addresses meet FATF Travel Rule requirements without exposing customer data. ● Banks and asset managers can issue tokenized assets with verifiable provenance  throughout the asset’s lifecycle. 
• Enterprises can restore control of compromised contracts using role-based  recovery mechanisms. 
• Regulators can supervise transactions with assurance of compliance while also  preserving user privacy. 
• Trading venues can restrict participation to verified entities through onchain  credential checks. 
• Investors and institutions can confirm the legal ownership of specific wallets with  ease. 

“I’m very excited to be working closely with the team at GLEIF. Bringing the LEI identity  standard onchain is something that will accelerate the adoption of digital assets by the  world’s largest institutions, which is what Chainlink is now at the epicenter of enabling  globally. It has been great working with the GLEIF team, and I think their widely used  identity standard will also become widely used in the onchain finance world.” — Sergey  Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink. 

With trusted identity and compliance policies embedded directly into contracts and  assets, financial institutions, stablecoin issuers, and trading venues can confidently scale  tokenized asset solutions globally.