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Samsung SDS has won Korea Securities Depository's project to build and operate a token securities platform in South Korea. The project will connect KSD's existing electronic securities account system with a blockchain-based distributed ledger, with Samsung SDS responsible for platform components including total volume management, gateway functions, node operation and distributed-ledger architecture. Completion is planned for February 2027. The platform represents a move from KSD's earlier technology testbed — launched in June 2025 — toward a full-scale system capable of handling live transactions and service operations. Samsung SDS has previously worked on KSD-related token securities projects, including functional analysis consulting in 2024 and testbed platform construction in 2025.
South Korea's legal framework now recognises distributed ledgers as securities registries
The platform build follows legislative work that brought security tokens into the formal capital-markets framework. The Financial Services Commission said revisions passed by the National Assembly on January 15, 2026, created legal grounds for the issuance and circulation of security tokens by amending the Act on Electronic Registration of Stocks and Bonds and the Financial Investment Services and Capital Markets Act. The revised framework recognises distributed ledgers as securities registries and keeps security tokens within existing securities regulation rather than creating a parallel regime. The FSC also said detailed investor-protection rules and account-management infrastructure would be prepared through a joint consultative body. KSD launched its Token Securities Test-bed Platform in June 2025 with functions including total volume management, node management and a distributed ledger system, and said at the time it would transition the system toward an operating environment in line with token securities legislation.
The project concerns central market infrastructure, not issuer-level experimentation
The KSD platform is significant because it targets the depository layer - the same level of infrastructure that DTCC occupies in the United States. Rather than a single issuer or platform tokenising individual assets, this is the national securities depository building the shared rails on which token securities would be issued, registered and circulated across the Korean capital market. The affected parties are issuers seeking electronic registration of token securities, securities firms and platforms that may connect to KSD's infrastructure, investors whose holdings would depend on legally recognised records, and regulators overseeing issuance and circulation. The precise launch participants, asset classes, production go-live date and treatment of real estate-backed instruments remain unconfirmed in available public reports. In practice, Samsung SDS is building the bridge between Korea's existing electronic securities system and a distributed-ledger-based infrastructure, with a February 2027 completion target and a statutory framework already in place.
