Shinhan Is Testing the Same Tokenized Fund on Solana and Plume at Once

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Shinhan Asset Management is testing the same tokenized-fund concept on two rival blockchains within the space of a week. On Aug. 21, South Korea’s $96.6 billion asset manager signed a proof-of-concept agreement with Solana Foundation, Etherfuse and Orca to trial a won-denominated tokenized bond fund.

Seven days earlier, on Aug. 14, it had signed nearly the same agreement with Plume, a competing tokenization-focused blockchain, for the same underlying fund.

Neither deal commits Shinhan to anything. Both are non-binding memoranda covering technical validation only, not product launches. Taken together, though, they show a bank hedging its infrastructure bet rather than picking a winner.

Two MOUs, One Template, Seven Days Apart

Both MOUs describe the same mechanism. Overseas institutional investors would buy into a Shinhan won-denominated ultra-short-term bond fund, which would then be issued as tokens for onchain trading. Both explicitly use BlackRock’s BUIDL, the roughly $2.67 billion tokenized Treasury fund, as their model.

And both cover the same technical checklist: KYC and anti-money-laundering systems, security audits, and how the tokens would settle onchain.

The only meaningful difference between them is which blockchain runs it. The Aug. 21 agreement adds two named technical partners the Plume deal doesn’t have: Etherfuse for compliant issuance and Orca for onchain liquidity.

Shinhan Asset Management CEO Lee Seok-won said the company’s goal is to “lead the market for managing KRW-based digital financial products.” That describes the ambition. It doesn’t say which of the two platforms, if either, will end up running it.

Why Shinhan Isn’t Choosing Yet

South Korea’s National Assembly amended the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act in January 2026, creating a legal path for tokenized securities for the first time. Those amendments don’t take effect until February 2027. Until then, tokenized fund products can only be tested in proof-of-concept form and sold to investors outside Korea, which is exactly the scope both MOUs describe.

That gap gives Shinhan roughly six months to build working technical capability on more than one rail before the law forces an actual product decision. Running two vendors in parallel, rather than committing to one now, is the more defensible way to spend that window.

Solana’s Longer Courtship

Solana has a much longer relationship with Shinhan than the Aug. 21 announcement suggests. Shinhan Investment Securities signed its first MOU with Solana Foundation in April 2025, covering custody infrastructure and stablecoin payments research.

In January 2026, a related unit, Shinhan Investment Corp, went further and worked with Etherfuse to actually issue a Korea-treasury-backed stablebond called KTB, real distribution rather than a pilot. Shinhan Card, a separate subsidiary, signed its own Solana Foundation MOU in April 2026 for a Web3 payments stack.

That history cuts against reading Aug. 21 as Solana’s entrance into Shinhan’s plans. It also cuts against reading it as an exclusive relationship. Etherfuse’s existing stablebond infrastructure already runs on Solana, Stellar, Canton and Monad, so even Shinhan’s own technology partner isn’t tied to one chain.

Who’s Actually Building This

The two newer names on the Aug. 21 MOU have real track records. Etherfuse, backed by White Star Capital and led by chief executive Dave Taylor, has been issuing Mexican government-bond-backed tokens to retail investors since 2023.

Orca, a Solana decentralized exchange, launched its own tokenized real-world-asset marketplace in May 2026. Neither is an unproven startup pitching a bank on a concept. Both already operate the kind of infrastructure this proof of concept is meant to validate.

What settles the hedge is the same law that created the reason for it. Once Korea’s STO framework takes effect in February 2027, Shinhan will have to choose a chain, split its product across more than one, or walk away from both pilots.

The $16 trillion to $30 trillion tokenization forecast that keeps getting attached to stories like this one traces back to a report Boston Consulting Group produced with ADDX, a tokenization exchange with a commercial interest in that number looking as large as possible. Whichever way Shinhan chooses, it won’t be because the forecast told it to.