On-Chain Finance Network: The New Digital Infrastructure Powering IFC-HCM

As a latecomer among regional financial centres, Ho Chi Minh City’s International Financial Centre (IFC-HCM) must forge a new competitive edge—one that cannot be achieved by simply replicating models from Singapore or Hong Kong.

That edge is the on-chain economy.

To realise this vision, the Global On-chain Economy Alliance (GOE Alliance) has been created as an open economic laboratory where new on-chain financial models can be built, tested safely, governed transparently, and deployed rapidly.

Yet an on-chain economy requires more than experimentation—it demands a completely new financial infrastructure purpose-built for digital assets, borderless commerce, instant settlement, and transparent capital flows.

This is where the On-Chain Finance Network (OFN) comes in: the dedicated on-chain infrastructure layer for IFC-HCM.

Introducing the On-Chain Finance Network (OFN)

The On-Chain Finance Network is the foundational blockchain infrastructure of IFC-HCM, built to host and operate next-generation financial applications and economic models. OFN is designed not only for Vietnam but for the broader SEA region, enabling Ho Chi Minh City to emerge as the On-Chain Finance Hub of Southeast Asia.

OFN is built upon five core principles:

1. Compliance First: Every individual and enterprise operating on OFN must undergo full KYC/KYB verification and adhere to strict AML requirements. This ensures OFN remains a trusted, globally compatible financial environment.

2. Security as the Highest Priority: With billions of dollars in tokenized assets expected to run on OFN, security is non-negotiable. OFN is engineered to guarantee the safety of all assets on-chain, with the ability to activate emergency governance controls when necessary.

3. Interoperability by Design: The network is compatible with the world’s leading high-performance blockchains, enabling liquidity to move seamlessly across global markets. OFN is not a walled garden—it is a bridge to the global digital economy.

4. Governance & Control: Validators of the OFN network will be operated by leading corporations across the region, ensuring decentralized operation, transparency, and institutional-grade governance.

5. Scalability at the Core: OFN operates with high throughput and low latency, enabling billions of transactions to be processed smoothly without congestion—an essential requirement for real-world financial applications.

Why OFN, Why Now

Southeast Asia is rapidly becoming a center of global economic gravity. With nearly 700 million people and a fast-expanding middle class, the region's trade flows are accelerating dramatically. Yet despite this momentum, Southeast Asia faces a critical infrastructure gap.

The bottleneck is clear: Cross-border payments remain expensive and slow, trapped in outdated correspondent banking systems. Regulatory fragmentation across Southeast Asia creates unnecessary friction in commerce. Enterprise data is siloed and difficult to verify, limiting access to financing—especially for SMEs—and widening the region's trade-finance gap.

The market is hungry for a new infrastructure: a unified, transparent, and decentralized financial network that eliminates intermediaries and connects regional digital markets seamlessly.

For IFC-HCM, building the On-Chain Finance Network is not just an opportunity—it is an urgent strategic imperative. As global finance accelerates toward digitization and tokenization, any financial center without native on-chain infrastructure will fall behind.

The GOE Alliance has identified OFN as the flagship initiative anchoring IFC-HCM's entire on-chain economy. This network is the technological bedrock for future digital asset markets, tokenized real-world assets, cross-border capital flows, and next-generation financial services. Without it, no meaningful on-chain ecosystem can take shape.

By committing to OFN now, IFC-HCM secures a first-mover advantage—setting technical standards, shaping regulatory frameworks, and building the infrastructure that will serve not only Vietnam but the broader region.

With OFN, IFC-HCM is not only catching up — it is taking the lead, shaping the region’s digital financial architecture and defining how capital, assets, and trust will move in Southeast Asia for the next decade.