Bank of Canada completes Project Samara as Export Development Canada issues Canada’s first tokenized bond settled in wholesale central bank deposits

The Bank of Canada, Export Development Canada (EDC), RBC and TD announced the successful completion of Project Samara, a real-world experiment assessing whether tokenization and distributed ledger technology (DLT) can improve the issuance and settlement of bonds. The milestone transaction was EDC’s issuance of Canada’s first tokenized bond using DLT, with payments settled in wholesale central bank deposits and the bond sold, traded and managed on the Samara Platform across its life cycle. Built on Hyperledger Fabric, the Samara Platform integrated separate bond and cash ledgers to support end-to-end, on-chain processes including issuance, bidding, coupon payments, redemption and secondary trading, with instant settlement. The project was deliberately limited in scope, involving a single CAD 100 million bond of less than three months issued to a closed investor group and funded and traded with central bank money. Participants reported improved operational efficiency and data integrity and reduced counterparty and settlement risk, while also identifying offsets and challenges including increased system and governance complexity, liquidity costs, new operational risks tied to technology and fallback mechanisms, and regulatory and legal frictions where centralized roles remained necessary. Comprehensive findings are set out in the Project Samara Research Paper, which the Bank of Canada positioned as a foundation for further work and continued public sector and industry collaboration.