July 2025
Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is frequently highlighted as a game-changer for financial market infrastructure (FMI). Yet despite numerous pilots, proofs of concept, and even some production deployments, DLT has neither replaced nor fundamentally transformed today’s financial markets. Its adoption remains largely limited to niche applications.
To better understand why, a cross-sector roundtable brought together participants from financial institutions, infrastructure providers, and legal experts. The objective was not to revisit past initiatives or debate DLT’s theoretical potential, but to explore the concrete reasons behind its slow adoption, and to identify the practical, legal, and institutional barriers to widescale adoption.
The discussion revealed broad agreement that DLT is technically viable for financial market use cases and that legal frameworks, while uneven, are becoming clearer in some jurisdictions. Yet participants also identified persistent barriers, economic, legal, operational, and cultural, that continue to constrain broader uptake. This report summarises those challenges, organised around six key themes that describe the current state of play and outline the preconditions for broader adoption.
