In April 2020, the Competence Center Banking and Finance at the University of Applied Sciences St. Gallen is launching a research project entitled “Independent Evaluation Framework for Security Tokens”, co-financed by the Swiss Innovation Agency (Innosuisse), in cooperation with Kaiser Odermatt & Partner and other renowned practice partners. The aim of this research project is to create moretransparency and comparability for security tokens . In addition to an urgently needed standardization in the area of security tokens, a comprehensive and broadly supported certification process is also to be developed. This certification will serve both companies that finance themselves by issuing security tokens and banks that maintain business relationships with the issuers, as well as private and institutional investors. The various needs of all stakeholder groups (e.g. banks, stock exchanges, regulators, lawyers and notaries, technology companies, associations, issuers, investors and platform providers) will be comprehensively assessed as part of a broad-based investigation in order to develop a certification process that is recognized by the market. Standardization and certification for security tokens to develop. Security tokens must be clearly distinguished from usage tokens or ICOs and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and the like, which were the subject of a veritable hype in 2017. This mainly involved the issue of usage tokens (a sub-category of ICOs), which allowed buyers to use a specific application or platform. In the meantime, there has been a movement away from usage tokens towards security tokens. STOs (Security Token Offerings) are a regulated version of financing. Here, investors invest in digital assets that are stored on a blockchain in a decentralized and tamper-proof manner. Blockchain technology therefore offers the opportunity to “tokenize” any “traditional” assets and make them tradable. This digital form of financing could provide SMEs in particular with simplified and more efficient access to the capital markets in the future. From an investor’s perspective, security tokens offer new or expanded access to various asset classes. The standardization and certification resulting from the research project should help to create transparency and trust in order to further promote the promising market for security tokens. Kaiser Odermatt & Partner is part of this research team, which is made up of several practice partners with in-depth experience and expertise in the field of blockchain and security tokens.