Bitcoin Cash will soon receive a tokenization feature that will allow users to run smart contracts and represent assets on the blockchain. The Tokenized Protocol, which was announced today, will allow BCH users to issue security tokens and utility tokens. These can represent assets such as financial holdings, tickets, and reward points:

“With Tokenized, it is now possible … to create and operate their own smart contract on the BCH network using customizable terms and conditions. They can then use the smart contract to facilitate the issuance, management, and exchange of tokens that represent real-world assets.”

The new feature is the result of several months of searching on the part of CoinGeek, a major crypto news site and BCH pool operator. In February, the site launched a contest that offered £5 million worth of BCH to the best tokenization proposal.

Over the spring and summer, several projects came to light, including a controversial protocol called Wormhole and another protocol called Simple Ledger. One of the most heavily discussed proposals was Colored Coins, a protocol which was ported from Bitcoin itself. However, none of these proposals were selected by CoinGeek.

Now, after nine months of competition, CoinGeek has announced that the winning proposal is the Tokenized Protocol. The project’s development team, which goes by Team Tokenized, is made up of five developers based out of Australia and Singapore: James Belding, Samuel Georges, Scott Barr, Farid Uddeen, and Brendan Lee.

Users will be able to see the new feature in more detail in mid-November, when a white paper, specification, and code will be released as part of a public preview. Few details have been released, but the feature reportedly does not require any changes to Bitcoin Cash’s code, nor does it require off-chain solutions or additional layers.

Since the Tokenized Protocol will make few if any changes to Bitcoin Cash itself, it will probably not be affected by the upcoming hard fork set for mid-November, which is threatening to split Bitcoin Cash into multiple cryptocurrencies — an outcome that is looking increasingly likely.