Swift announces Chainlink as winner of Hackathon 2025 after formalizing technological alliance

Chainlink was crowned the big winner of the Swift Hackathon 2025, just days after sealing a technological alliance with the entity. 

Just days after formalizing a technological alliance aimed at developing a blockchain-based ledger, Swift announced Chainlink as the winner of the Swift Hackathon 2025 Business Challenge. 

Chainlink's proposal stood out for offering an infrastructure capable of performing fast, secure, and regulatory-compliant settlements. This technology will connect different blockchain ecosystems and financial institutions, reducing operational friction when moving digital assets across multiple chains and jurisdictions.

Recognition of the protocol, which leads the market of blockchain oracles, comes at a time when the global payments network Swift is seeking to integrate innovative solutions to modernize its settlement processes and strengthen interoperability between traditional and digital financial systems.

Chainlink's solution unites traditional and digital finance

chainlink he presented At Hackathon 2025, a proposal caught the attention of the entire financial sector: a system capable of settling digital assets across borders and different blockchains quickly, securely, and under clear rules. The solution combines two key pieces of its technology—the Automated Compliance Engine (ACE) and the Chainlink Execution Environment (CRE)— with global standards such as vLEI messages and the Swift network, backed by the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF). 

This solution, proposed by Chainlink, creates a new cross-border model for the trading and settlement of regulated assets, implementing regulatory policies defined by issuers and regulators in real time.

The proposal achieves something the industry has been seeking for years: true interoperabilityTo do this, it links public blockchain networks with vLEI-based identity registries and Swift payment systems, all through a mechanism called Cross-Identity (CCID). This is an integration that allows wallet addresses and token flows to be frictionlessly associated with traditional financial identifiers. With this bridge, assets can move between different networks with the same confidence and precision offered by banking infrastructures, but without losing the dynamism of the digital environment.

On the other hand, in terms of security and privacy, the solution applies credentials verifiable directly on the chain, a strategy that protects personal information and verifies identities without exposing sensitive data. The design is based on the principle of “privacy through architecture”, ensuring that verification occurs within a reliable framework and without revealing more information than necessary.

On the regulatory front, the system implements what Chainlink calls atomic policies: Transactional rules written into smart contracts that execute automatically. These policies include jurisdiction-based limits, sanctions list checks, and restrictions on access to financial products. With KYC information and verified attributes integrated into CCID, compliance is ensured without relying on intermediaries or putting critical data at risk.

While the case presented at the hackathon focused on a delivery-versus-payment (DvP) scheme for tokenized funds, the underlying architecture is poised for much more. It can be adapted to cover instruments such as regulated stablecoins, tokenized deposits, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and digital securities, paving the way for a global, interoperable, and automated financial infrastructure.

The Swift-Chainlink Connection: 7 Years of a Partnership Redefining Finance

In addition to recognizing Chainlink as the winner of its global hackathon, Swift and the blockchain protocol announced, during Sibos 2025, a new strategic alliance aimed at launch a blockchain-based ledgerThe initiative represents a decisive step in the modernization of its infrastructure and the integration of traditional financial services with decentralized technologies.

Swift and Chainlink have been collaborating on common projects for over seven years, all focused on the same goal: enabling financial institutions to seamlessly connect to the blockchain ecosystem, using the messaging networks and standards they already use every day. Therefore, their new alliance consolidates years of working together and marks a new phase in their relationship.

According to Chainlink, the relationship between the two organizations began to take shape at Sibos 2016, when Sergey Nazarov, co-founder of the blockchain protocol, presented one of the first smart contract solutions applied to financial messaging. Since then, the companies have conducted numerous live tests, integrating Swift messaging with Chainlink's oracle technology and exploring the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), designed to enable the secure transfer of data and tokenized assets between different entities or networks.

Over the last decade, this cooperation has boosted the connection between tokenized assets and traditional payment systems. One of the most notable milestones was the 2024 joint demonstration with institutions like UBS, which successfully settled tokenized funds using the Swift network, while Chainlink managed the orchestration logic on the blockchain. Thanks to this integration, institutions were able to maintain their usual operational structure while simultaneously gaining risk-free access to on-chain digital asset management.

Another shared development front has been the joint application of artificial intelligence and Chainlink oracles to corporate action management and the recording of verified financial data. This evolution seeks to create global standards around the reliability, interoperability, and traceability of information.

With this new partnership, Swift and Chainlink aim to consolidate a hybrid infrastructure model in which traditional finance and blockchain coexist seamlessly, offering banks and financial institutions a secure path toward tokenization and the digital services of the future.

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Chainlink-Swift partnership accelerates integration of regulated digital assets

Chainlink's selection as the winner of the Swift Hackathon 2025, along with the formalization of a new technological alliance, strengthens a collaboration that has been incorporating blockchain into the global financial infrastructure in a practical and scalable way.

By establishing a unified connection between blockchain networks and traditional systems, supported by regulatory standards, the solution improves settlement processes and regulatory compliance. It also ensures privacy protection and operational security.

In this context, the Chainlink platform, combined with the Swift network, demonstrates how digital finance can be seamlessly integrated into existing financial systems, fostering broader adoption of regulated digital assets.

The efforts of both organizations are key to increasing accessibility, transparency, and trust in global markets, driving the incorporation of the blockchain ecosystem into traditional banking and financial services.