Semantic Tokenization for Financial Infrastructure — A Foundational Framework

This paper introduces Semantic Tokenization as a foundational architectural discipline for the next generation of financial market infrastructure. Semantic Tokenization reconceptualizes the financial token not as a technical ledger artifact but as a meaning-bearing, identity-anchored, compliance-aware, settlement-deterministic unit of financial representation. The framework comprises five interlocking components: (1) the Canonical Identity Framework, providing rail-agnostic persistent asset identifiers; (2) the Unified Representation Model (URM), enabling meaning-preserving translation across heterogeneous data paradigms; (3) the Multi-Rail Deterministic Settlement model, embedding settlement semantics intrinsically within the token rather than in operator configuration; (4) the Semantic Compliance Routing Engine (SCRE), encoding jurisdiction-aware compliance predicates as first-class token properties; and (5) the Cross-Rail Semantic Interoperability Protocol, guaranteeing that asset identity, compliance state, and settlement semantics are fully preserved across rail transitions.