Financial institutions exploring public blockchains must grapple with technology risks that go beyond governance: consensus vulnerabilities, validator concentration, custody failures, and migration challenges. This roundtable will examine how token design can embed safety, integrity, interoperability, and usability into blockchain-based payments. Drawing on the Global Blockchain Business Council’s risk mitigation framework and MIT DCI/J.P. Morgan’s latest research on payment token design, the discussion will identify concrete safeguards and operational practices that can make public blockchain adoption safe, resilient, and institution-ready.

The conversation will focus on concrete design and operational safeguards banks should demand when engaging with public blockchain-based assets.

• Safety and settlement assurance: How can token design embed safety features so banks can trust settlement?
• Integrity and governance resilience: What token-level governance or wrapper mechanisms can ensure integrity even when decentralised governance diverges from bank needs?
• Interoperability and portability: How should payment tokens be designed for cross-chain usability so banks can migrate if one chain becomes unusable?
• Usability and custody: How custody, key management and recovery differ across L1 and L2s, and how institutional wrappers can abstract complexity for banks.

Pre-read materials:

• GBBC [systemic non-financial risks - governance, ops, tech, legal]

• MIT DCI [design principles for payment tokens: safety, integrity, interoperability, usability]

This session is Part 2 of a 2-part series on Public Blockchains in Banking. Read more about Part 1 of the discussion here.