Who’s Behind a Smart Contract or a Wallet? Why Tokenized Finance Needs Verifiable Organizational Identity
As digital assets move closer to mainstream adoption, institutions need to realize benefits beyond speed and automation. They require a trusted way to verify which organizations stand behind smart contracts, wallets, and other on-chain activity.
Author: Alexandre Kech
Date: 2026-03-27
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For years, digital asset markets have focused on the benefits of blockchain technology, from speed and programmability to automation and efficiency. Those gains matter. But as digital assets move closer to mainstream financial use, they are no longer judged on technical performance alone. They are judged on whether markets can support trust, accountability, and governance at scale and across ecosystems.
That is where the next phase of adoption will be decided.
Bridging the trust gap in tokenized finance
As tokenized finance matures and becomes more deeply integrated into the traditional financial system, one question is becoming harder to ignore: who is behind the smart contracts, wallets, and other on-chain activity? While blockchain technology has undoubtedly made it easier to move value, it has not solved the question of moving trust with the same level of confidence.
In traditional finance, trust is reinforced through established institutional structures. Market participants know which legal entity is issuing an instrument, operating a platform, or standing behind a transaction.
But in many blockchain-based environments, that level of clarity is missing, and there is no reliable way to verify who is issuing, holding, or transacting digital assets, especially across multiple ledgers and environments. For instance, a wallet address may indicate where activity occurs, but it does not reliably indicate which organization is responsible, who authorized the action, or which governance framework applies. The same applies to wallets themselves. In tokenized finance, a wallet may indicate where an action originates, but not which organization controls it, who is authorized to use it, or whether it operates within an accountable governance or compliance framework.
This trust gap matters far more now than it did a few years ago. As tokenized assets move from niche experimentation toward real financial infrastructure, questions of accountability become far more urgent. Financial institutions, regulators, service providers, and counterparties all need confidence in the organizations behind digital transactions. Without that, it is impossible to effectively assess risk, apply oversight, support compliance, or scale adoption across borders.
How organizational identity changes the equation
A key way to build stronger trust is by cryptographically binding organizational identity, wallets, and smart contracts together. For institutions, this creates a clearer basis for compliance, accountability, and confidence in on-chain transactions.
Organizational identity should therefore be seen as core market infrastructure for digital finance. Importantly, the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) already provides a globally recognized way to identify legal entities. Its digital counterpart, the verifiable LEI (vLEI), extends that concept into digital interactions. Together, they create a stronger bridge between off-chain governance and on-chain execution.
This empowers institutions with a reliable way to understand who stands behind a smart contract, a digital asset transaction, or a blockchain-based service. Instead of asking only whether a smart contract can execute, markets can begin to ask who deployed it, which legal entity stands behind it, and whether that relationship can be verified. This can support stronger due diligence, clearer accountability, and better interoperability across digital asset ecosystems. For institutions, a more credible path from pilot projects to scalable production use remains to be seen.
Why interoperability matters
As we look ahead, one of the most important and pressing considerations is interoperability. Digital finance will not develop on a single chain, in a single jurisdiction, or under a single governance model. It will be multi-network, cross-border, and increasingly interconnected.
If markets can rely on interoperable identity frameworks, trust can be ported across any digital ecosystem. This makes it easier for institutions, infrastructure providers, and regulators to engage with digital assets using shared expectations and consistent organizational signals. As standardized, neutral, multi-chain, and multi-platform enablers of organizational identity services for digital assets, the LEI and vLEI are ideally positioned to support this universally interoperable layer.
From technical promise to trusted infrastructure
Verifiable organizational identity presents broader strategic opportunities. Beyond supporting compliance, it can help organizations reduce friction, improve discoverability, strengthen ecosystem trust, and participate more confidently in automated and cross-border digital markets. In other words, it helps transform blockchain from a promising technical environment into an infrastructure that institutions can use with confidence.
This means that the next stage of tokenized finance will not be defined solely by faster settlement or more programmable assets. Instead, it will be defined by whether markets can combine those capabilities with verifiable organizational identity to hardwire trust into all business interactions
The need for increased trust across tokenized finance was a central theme in my recent Trust Talks conversation with Thomas A. Mayfield, Head of Decentralized Trust and Identity Solutions at the Cardano Foundation. We explored why secure and verifiable organizational identity is becoming a foundational trust layer for tokenized finance, and why the future of digital assets depends not only on moving value more efficiently, but on making organizational responsibility more visible and verifiable.
Listen to the full Trust Talks episode to explore how verifiable organizational identity can strengthen accountability, interoperability, and confidence across smart contracts, wallets, and digital asset markets.
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Alexandre Kech is the CEO of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF).
Prior to joining GLEIF, Alexandre Kech was Head of Digital Securities at the SIX Digital Exchange. As a member of the Executive Board, Alex had full executive responsibility for the Digital Securities business vertical, including sales and relationship management, product development, business design, and ecosystem expansion.
Over the past 25 years, Alex has constructed a unique career combining finance at BNY Mellon, payments/securities infrastructure and standards at SWIFT, and blockchain and digital assets at Onchain Custodian (ONC) and, most recently, Citi Ventures. As co-founder and CEO of ONC, Alex led the Singapore and Shanghai-based team that built custody and prime brokerage services for crypto and other digital assets from scratch. As Blockchain & Digital Asset director at Citi Ventures, he built a team to engage the European ecosystem on emerging use cases for blockchain technologies and digital assets.
Alex is also involved in industry and standardization initiatives. As the convenor of the ISO TC 68 / SC8 / WG3, which produced the ISO 24165 Digital Token Identifier (DTI), he is a member of the DTI Foundation Product Advisory Committee. He also recently served as co-chair of the Global Digital Finance (gdf.io) custody working group.
Alex earned a bachelor’s degree in translation and an Executive MBA from the Quantic School of Business and Technology while building Onchain Custodian, putting theory into practice in real-time.
