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A white paper published on June 22, 2026, by the Global Layer One (GL1) initiative has embedded Chainlink’s compliance infrastructure into a regulatory architecture for tokenized assets, placing the protocol alongside contributions from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), JP Morgan’s Kinexys division, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
The paper, titled “Programmable Compliance,” was developed with contributors from Banque de France, Standard Chartered, and the IMF and sets out what GL1 calls a STAR framework organizing compliance requirements across participant eligibility, transaction permissibility, asset-level controls, and reporting.
Global Layer One (GL1) features Chainlink in its new white paper on solving compliance for regulated tokenized assets.
The paper was written with contributions from global financial institutions, policymakers, and other industry organizations, including:
• Bank for… pic.twitter.com/YVz5Z825tg
— Chainlink (@chainlink) June 22, 2026
The core problem GL1 is addressing has stalled institutional tokenization deployments since their earliest pilots. Compliance rules embedded directly into token contracts cannot be updated without redeploying the contract itself, a structural problem across the jurisdictions and asset classes that institutional tokenization actually spans.
The paper’s solution separates policy from execution. A policy wrapper governs transfer conditions without touching the base asset. A policy manager identifies which rules apply per transaction. A compliance rules engine evaluates those rules. The four components produce a compliance attestation, an immutable record of whether a transaction satisfied applicable requirements at execution.
Chainlink’s Automated Compliance Engine (ACE) is cited as a working implementation of the policy management layer that the GL1 model describes, specifically its ability to update or remove compliance rules without redeploying underlying contracts.
The paper also notes Chainlink’s cross-chain identity system, which links wallet addresses across networks to a single verified entity, removing duplicative onboarding when counterparties transact across multiple chains.
The institutional pressure toward battle-hardened infrastructure like Chainlink emerged from a sequence of high-profile failures that collectively drained over $340 million from cross-chain bridges across 14 separate exploits in 2026 alone.
The largest exploit of 2026 targeted KelpDAO’s rsETH bridge, where North Korea’s Lazarus Group manipulated LayerZero’s verifier infrastructure to steal nearly $292 million. The attack exposed a broader weakness: Nearly half of LayerZero applications relied on a default single-verifier (1-of-1 DVN) setup, creating a critical single point of failure.
In response, DeFi United helped recover over 95% of affected funds, while major protocols, including KelpDAO, Solv Protocol, Virtual Protocol, Kraken, and Lombard Finance, migrated to Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol. The incident accelerated industry consolidation toward decentralized, multi-node validation systems with stronger security records and institutional trust.
GL1 is direct about what programmable compliance cannot do. Financial Action Task Force data cited in the paper shows only one assessed jurisdiction achieved full compliance with Recommendation 15 on virtual assets as of 2024. The framework does not resolve jurisdictional conflicts automatically, does not substitute for statutory reporting obligations, and does not give its Compliance Attestations legal standing under any jurisdiction’s law.
For Chainlink, the GL1 citation is not a commercial contract; it is inclusion in a standard-setting document whose authors collectively oversee trillions in financial infrastructure, at the moment when decisions about which technology gets embedded into regulated tokenized asset pipelines are being made.
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