Chainlink Automated Compliance Engine (ACE) enables compliance-focused digital assets across blockchains and jurisdictions, paving the way for $100+ trillion in institutional capital to enter the onchain economy.
Chainlink, the standard for onchain finance, today announced the launch of the Chainlink Automated Compliance Engine (ACE)—a unified and modular standard to solve all onchain compliance problems and bring institutional capital onchain. Built on the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) and designed to support both traditional and decentralized finance, the Automated Compliance Engine enables the creation of compliance-focused digital assets and services across public and private blockchains and paves the way for $100+ trillion in institutional capital to enter the onchain economy.
Chainlink ACE is launching in collaboration with multiple leading market participants, including Apex Group, GLEIF, and the ERC-3643 Association. Now in early access for select institutions, Chainlink ACE unlocks critical compliance-focused use cases for onchain finance, such as reusable digital identities, automated policy enforcement, cross-chain compliant-enabled digital asset settlement, regulated asset usage in DeFi protocols, and more.
“We welcome the integration of the vLEI into Chainlink’s Automated Compliance Engine as a powerful example of how verifiable organizational identity can enhance compliance across blockchain ecosystems. As regulatory expectations evolve in both digital and traditional finance, we encourage all financial institutions to explore with their solution providers how adopting the vLEI can strengthen trust, interoperability, and auditability in their compliance frameworks.”—Alexandre Kech, CEO of GLEIF.
Current compliance processes in traditional finance are often fragmented, siloed, and costly—resulting in billions of dollars in onboarding costs for institutional investors. Institutions are required to manage complex identity verification, risk monitoring, and reporting processes, often duplicating efforts across counterparties. This increases costs, reduces margins, and lengthens onboarding times. Initial attempts to improve compliance processes and extend them onchain have relied on bespoke integrations, manual procedures, or static allowlists—all of which fall short of the scale, flexibility, and privacy needed for regulated blockchain-based finance. As such, there are no onchain standards for KYC/AML enforcement and other compliance mechanisms.
"Having recently acquired Tokeny, Apex Group’s collaboration with Chainlink marks yet another milestone in our journey to bring compliance-focused digital asset infrastructure to institutional markets. Chainlink’s technology, combined with our existing tokenisation and on-chain finance capabilities, will set the standard for compliance on DLT. We are bridging key compliance requirements with seamless blockchain execution."— Zion Hilelly, Chief Product Officer of Apex Group.
Chainlink ACE addresses compliance challenges by introducing a modular, privacy-preserving framework that integrates existing identity systems with onchain infrastructure and supports onchain and offchain policy enforcement. This enables regulated financial institutions to deploy their assets on public and permissionless networks while supporting their compliance obligations. Institutions can leverage Chainlink ACE to enforce policy rules directly within smart contracts, verify credentials like KYC/AML without exposing personal data, and coordinate identity attestations across blockchains and jurisdictions. The architecture also enables compliance logic to be reusable, upgradeable, and enforceable across any combination of token standards, execution environments, or legal jurisdictions. As a result, onboarding costs and operational complexity could be drastically reduced, while improving compliance reliability and scalability as institutions can reuse compliance workflows and systems they already operate.
“Our goal here is to make faster, cheaper, and more accurate compliance a key defining benefit of making or owning digital assets, so that if you make a digital asset and use the Chainlink standard for compliance in that digital asset, it will be better, cheaper, and faster than its traditional alternative. Chainlink ACE is the compliance and identity standard the tokenized asset economy has been waiting for, with today’s launch providing a final critical building block for over $100 trillion in institutional capital to move onchain. By collaborating closely with global leaders such as Apex Group, GLEIF, and the ERC-3643 Association, Chainlink ACE is unlocking critical industry requirements to move to its final stage of mass adoption. Reusable onchain identities over CCID, fine-grained policy controls through smart contracts, and automated compliance across chains and jurisdictions is the next stage of both the compliance industry and the blockchain industry.”—Sergey Nazarov, Co-Founder of Chainlink
Chainlink ACE introduces a number of new components for accelerating the creation of compliance-focused digital assets and services, including:
- Cross-Chain Identity (CCID) Framework: A reusable identity framework for representing investor identities, attestations, and credentials across multiple blockchains, which stores cryptographic proofs of verified credentials, such as KYC, AML, accredited investor status, and more.
- Cross-Chain Token (CCT) Compliance Extension: A lightweight interface that enables any token to support compliance functionality by integrating with Chainlink services.
- Policy Manager: A customizable rules engine that enables users to define, manage, and enforce compliance policies directly within smart contracts, with onchain or offchain execution.
- Identity Manager: A middleware that links real-world identity sources to various onchain formats, enabling the registration, distribution, synchronization, and lifecycle management of identity credentials across networks without storing NPI/PII onchain.
- Monitoring & Reporting Manager: A service for observing infrastructure, smart contracts, and third-party integrations for non-compliance, anomalies, and system failures, facilitating real-time alerts, proactive risk mitigation, and strengthened operational resilience. It also enables institutions to obtain reports to support internal and regulatory compliance.
Organizations will also be able to access a Compliance Sandbox, onchain policy accelerators like prebuilt policy modules and pre-audited templates, and developer tooling, including a dedicated SDK, API, CLI, and admin UI.
“Partnering with Chainlink has enabled the ERC-3643 standard to become interoperable, dynamic, and policy-driven. By embedding Chainlink ACE and vLEI into the ERC-3643 framework, permissioned tokens can easily enforce jurisdiction-specific rules onchain. This shows how composable solutions and standards are key to upgrading finance onchain at speed.”—Dennis O'Connell, President of the ERC-3643 Association
As the only comprehensive standard for enabling financial institutions and DeFi protocols to build compliance into any and all parts of the asset lifecycle, Chainlink ACE is driving forward a future where all the world's regulated capital and markets can operate compliantly onchain at scale.
Reach out here to inquire about early access to Chainlink ACE. Check out the launch post and technical deep-dive article for more information on the technology and use cases enabled.
About Chainlink
Chainlink is the backbone of the blockchain industry, the global standard for connecting blockchains to real-world data, other blockchains, governments, and enterprise systems. Chainlink has enabled tens of trillions in transaction value across the blockchain economy, powering critical use cases across DeFi, banking, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), cross-chain, and more. Chainlink is widely adopted by major financial market infrastructures, institutions, and top DeFi protocols, including Swift, Euroclear, Mastercard, Fidelity International, UBS, ANZ, Aave, GMX, Lido, and many more. Learn more by visiting chain.link.
Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and contains statements about the future, including anticipated product features, development, and timelines for the rollout of these features. These statements are only predictions and reflect current beliefs and expectations with respect to future events; they are based on assumptions and are subject to risk, uncertainties, and changes at any time. There can be no assurance that actual results will not differ materially from those expressed in these statements, although we believe them to be based on reasonable assumptions. All statements are valid only as of the date first posted. These statements may not reflect future developments due to user feedback or later events and we may not update this post in response. Please review the Chainlink Terms of Service, which provides important information and disclosures.
