Banks Back Tokenized Deposits
Five U.S. regional banks — Huntington, First Horizon, M&T, KeyBank and Old National — are rolling tokenized, FDIC‑insured deposits via the Cari Network, which the brief says now handles $8.3 trillion in assets and ties into core bank systems ( ). The solution uses ZKsync’s Prividium L2 for privacy/compliance and was described in coverage as a modernization of deposit infrastructure ( ).
Cari’s public roadmap names a minimum‑viable product in March, a controlled pilot in Q3 and a target to make the network available to customers in Q4 2026. (ledgerinsights.com)) The Cari white paper specifies a translation bridge that will convert on‑chain events into banking message formats such as ISO 20022 and SWIFT MT to update off‑chain deposit ledgers in lockstep with token movements. (whitepaper.cari.com)) Leadership and governance are led by former U.S. Comptroller Eugene “Gene” Ludwig, and the initiative has received public backing from the Mid‑Size Bank Coalition of America. (cari.com)) The underlying infrastructure is ZKsync’s Prividium, described by ZKsync as a permissioned validium that keeps transaction data private off‑chain while anchoring zero‑knowledge proofs to Ethereum for public verifiability; Prividium was first announced in May 2025. (zksync.io)) Independent reporting lists the design partners’ balance‑sheet sizes at roughly $225 billion, $214 billion, $184 billion, $72 billion and $84 billion respectively, providing the scale rationale for building a bespoke bank‑governed rail. (ledgerinsights.com)) Early roll‑out plans limit tokenized transfers initially to transactions between the participating banks’ own customers while the network validates legal equivalence, embedded KYC/AML flows and ledger performance ahead of broader interbank connectivity. (ledgerinsights.com))
