Starting point 02
The open standard.
ERC-3643, the open standard that gives each security its rules.
6 min read
At a glance
- ERC-3643 provides common interfaces through which each security expresses and enforces its identity requirements, eligibility, transfer conditions and issuer controls.
- Compliance becomes part of the security's ownership logic. Permitted transfers settle. Ineligible transfers revert.
- The standard is governed by the ERC-3643 Association. T-REX authored it and is built on it. T-REX does not own it.
What a standard does here
A security is defined by its rules: who may hold it, under what conditions it may change hands, and what its issuer and agents are permitted to do. ERC-3643 is the open standard that lets a tokenized security carry those rules with it. It provides common interfaces through which each security expresses and enforces its identity requirements, eligibility, transfer conditions and issuer controls.
The result is that the rules travel with the asset rather than living in the platform that happened to issue it. A venue, a custodian or an application does not need to know the specifics of every fund or bond it touches. It needs to speak the standard, and the security enforces the rest.
Compliance as part of ownership logic
In most markets, compliance is a process that runs around the asset: checks performed before a trade, records kept after it, and reconciliation to make sure the two agree. ERC-3643 makes compliance part of the security's ownership logic instead. Identity requirements, asset-specific eligibility rules and transfer conditions determine whether ownership can change at all.
Permitted transfers settle. Ineligible transfers revert. There is no separate step in which a transfer happens and is later found to have been improper, because a transfer that fails the security's rules does not happen. Compliance stops being a wall around the asset and becomes an interface for the market.
Adding who to balances and prices
Decentralized finance reasons about two variables: how much, and at what price. Securities add a third: who. An application that wants to lend against, settle or distribute a regulated asset has to know whether a given participant is eligible to hold it, and it has to know that for every asset it supports.
ERC-3643 standardizes that third variable. Because every security built on the standard exposes its eligibility and transfer logic through the same interfaces, applications integrate tokenized securities once rather than per asset. The asset stays regulated. The design space for what can be built around it opens.
Permitted transfers settle. Ineligible transfers revert.
Reusable credentials: ONCHAINID
Rules are only useful if participants can prove they meet them. ONCHAINID turns a completed identity or eligibility check into a signed, reusable proof linked to a persistent account. Trusted verification providers perform the checks. Securities and applications verify only the proofs their rules require, without placing unnecessary personal information onchain.
Each security continues to apply its own eligibility and transfer rules. What changes is that a participant verified once can present that verification wherever it is accepted, rather than repeating the process for every issuer and venue. Share the proof, not the paperwork.
Who governs the standard
ERC-3643 is governed by the ERC-3643 Association, an independent body of members that curates the specification and its reference implementations. T-REX authored the standard and is built on it. T-REX does not own it, and adoption of the standard does not imply adoption of any other T-REX component.
That independence matters. More than $32 billion in tokenized assets has been issued on ERC-3643 by issuers, agents and platforms across more than twenty jurisdictions, many of which have no other relationship with T-REX. The standard is the common foundation; what is built on it is the market's to decide.
Why open matters
Closed platforms create products. Open standards create markets. If every issuer, chain, venue and application used a different token format, identity system and compliance architecture, tokenization would reproduce the existing market's fragmentation in software, one proprietary silo at a time.
A common standard for securities allows an open market to form around them. Issuers keep control of their assets. Venues and applications integrate once. Investors carry their credentials with them. Common interfaces, asset-specific rules: that is the arrangement ERC-3643 provides, and it is the foundation on which the T-REX Network is built.
Where the real depth lives
The standard, in detail
The anatomy of an ERC-3643 security, the identity and eligibility model, the transfer rules and the developer references, on the standard's own page.