Bank of England selects Chainlink for its RT2 Synchronisation Lab — settling tokenized assets against central bank money
EV-062 · Bank of England (RT2 Synchronisation Lab) · 2026-02-10 · Evidence class: pilot · Confidence 97%
In plain English
In plain terms: the Bank of England is rebuilding the system UK banks use to move large sums between each other. It picked 18 organisations, Chainlink among them, to test settling tokenized assets against central bank money — so the asset and the cash change hands at the same moment instead of one side waiting on the other. It is a simulation with no real money, but it shapes what the real system becomes.
Detail
Evidence class: PILOT. The Bank of England selected Chainlink as one of 18 organisations for its Synchronisation Lab — part of the RTGS Future Roadmap for RT2, the UK’s renewed real-time gross settlement service. Synchronisation is the Bank’s design for "atomic settlement in central bank money": funds in RT2 settle if and only if the corresponding asset settles on an external ledger. Key facts: • Chainlink’s mandate: a decentralized approach to executing settlements that links central bank funds with digitally issued securities. • Fellow participants include Swift, LSEG, Partior, Quant, and UAC Labs, testing use cases spanning FX, tokenized bonds, and collateral management. • The Lab runs from spring 2026 for around six months, with participants integrating against a simulated RT2 via dedicated APIs and a user interface; a final report will follow. • Deployment status, precisely: the Lab uses a simulated environment — no real funds move, participation confers no regulatory approval, and findings inform the design of a potential future live RT2 synchronisation capability. UPDATE (August 2026) — Chainlink reports it has demonstrated within the Lab how the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) enables synchronised settlement between central bank money and tokenised assets on public ledgers. Three custom components were built on top of CRE: 1. A Chainlink Labs Synchronisation Operator UI — initiates transactions, builds onchain instructions, and tracks status. 2. A CRE UI — displays activity across deployed CRE workflows. 3. A central bank UI — confirms transactions. Together these are described as enabling a synchronisation operator to coordinate settlement across traditional payment systems and onchain environments. Sourcing of this update: Chainlink’s own announcement. No corresponding Bank of England publication has been located, and the Bank has not published Lab findings at time of writing. The conditions stated above are unchanged — the environment remains simulated, no real funds move, and participation confers no regulatory approval. These components are demonstrated within the Lab, not deployed in RT2.
Why it matters
The UK’s central bank — operator of one of the world’s most systemically important settlement systems — selected Chainlink into the official lab shaping RT2’s future synchronisation capability, alongside Swift and LSEG. Evidence class is pilot: simulated environment, no real funds, no endorsement — and still the sixth central bank documented in this vault.
Primary source: Bank of England — RT2 Synchronisation Lab (Chainlink selection reported Feb 10, 2026)
Verified — bankofengland.co.uk + multiple reports of Chainlink’s selection
Topics: Central Banks, Bank of England, United Kingdom, RTGS, RT2, Atomic Settlement, Settlement, Tokenisation
