Polygon Launches CDK Besu to Connect Institutional Networks and Transfer Assets
Key Facts
Polygon announced the launch of CDK Besu, an addition to its toolkit for creating private networks for financial institutions and connecting them to chains linked to Agglayer to transfer assets between them. The company said in its announcement that the solution was "available and production-ready on the Ethereum mainnet," putting readiness for live operations at the center of its institutional offering. The architecture combines private-network connectivity to a broader asset-transfer ecosystem with institutions retaining transaction data within their own infrastructure, according to the company's description. That data is not published on Ethereum, while transfer certificates are settled on the base layer, according to Polygon's announcement and product documentation. The connectivity targets chains connected to Agglayer, with transferred assets retaining a single canonical representation on every connected chain, the company said. Polygon also said institutional network activity carries no obligation to share revenue with the company.
Polygon positions the single canonical representation of an asset against the proliferation of wrapped versions of the same asset across networks, the issue its cross-chain connectivity design seeks to address. According to its announcement, an asset crossing Agglayer retains this standardized form on every chain connected to the layer, aiming to reduce the proliferation of wrapped versions. Executing transfers involves requesting a bridge proof, which the Succinct proving network generates using SP1 technology, according to developer documentation. The process then moves to certificate settlement on the base layer, following the path the documentation describes for connecting the private network to the bridge. Ethereum verifies proofs and settles transfer certificates, while the institution's private infrastructure retains its transaction data. Asset transfers across networks are thus tied to a proof and settlement process, while internal transaction data remains unpublished on Ethereum, according to Polygon's description.
The product documentation defines the scope of bridge protection as accounting for deposited and withdrawn assets through what it calls the "pessimistic proof" used in this process. The documentation says this proof ensures that "a chain cannot withdraw more assets than it has deposited," the constraint underpinning protection of the shared bridge. The guarantee concerns the amount of assets a chain can move out of the bridge relative to what it previously deposited. The documentation states, however, that the pessimistic proof does not establish the validity of the chain's internal state transitions, leaving those operations outside the scope of that guarantee. This limitation means protection of bridge accounting differs from verification of every transaction or internal change within the private network. Polygon presents this protection alongside institutions' retention of data internally, within an architecture combining transaction privacy with connectivity to other chains.
The choice of Besu comes amid institutional uses that include settlement and asset-tokenization infrastructure, among them a private network at the U.S. Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation and a shared ledger being developed by Swift. DTCC said its asset tokenization took place on its private Besu-based network as well as the public Canton network. This included production transactions involving tokenized assets held at the Depository Trust Company, according to the company's statement on its tokenization service. In another institutional initiative, Swift said its shared-ledger architecture rests on open-source foundations, using technology based on Hyperledger Besu. It added that the architecture is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, as part of the shared-ledger design it is developing. These uses place Besu within financial institutions' infrastructure spanning private and public networks, alongside Polygon's new offering to connect institutional networks.
More broadly, a report by LF Decentralized Trust counted about 80 institutional platforms using its technologies at different stages of moving into production. The tally includes platforms already operating in production environments and others on a clear path toward doing so, according to the report's description of the platforms covered. In the context of tokenized asset markets, Piero Cipollone, a member of the European Central Bank's Executive Board, warned of the proliferation of platforms lacking interoperability. He said this proliferation could "replicate the current fragmentation of European capital markets, or even deepen it," linking fragmentation risks to the proliferation of incompatible platforms. His warning concerns European market infrastructure as tokenization platforms develop, while Polygon's offering aims to connect private networks to chains linked to Agglayer.
On the institutional calendar for October 2026, Polygon announced its participation in the U.S. Money 20/20 event in Las Vegas to meet payments and stablecoin teams. The event runs from October 18 to 21, 2026, according to the company's participation announcement, bringing its announced meetings in the sector together over that period. The participation comes alongside its announcement that the private-network connectivity solution is production-ready, an offering directed at financial institutions. In parallel, DTCC had set October 2026 as the expected launch date for its asset-tokenization service. The company linked that expected date to production transactions involving tokenized assets held at the Depository Trust Company, describing them as a step toward the service's launch.