Exploratory work on new technologies for wholesale central bank money settlement
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Between May and November 2024, the Eurosystem conducted exploratory work to test the settlement of distributed ledger technology (DLT)-based transactions in central bank money viathree interoperability solutions provided by the Eurosystem.
This initiative brought together64 participants, including central banks, financial market participants and DLT platform operators, and involved over50 trials and experiments.
Trials involved real settlements in central bank money and experiments focused on mock transactions, providing valuable insights into the technical and operational feasibility of the proposed solutions as well as business, operational and legal insights on the use cases tested.
Report: The Eurosystem’s exploratory work on new technologies for wholesale central bank money settlementThe exploratory work highlighted the strong interest from financial market participants in leveraging DLT and tokenisation for wholesale financial transactions, as an opportunity to enhance the efficiency and redesign processes and practices across the entire value chain. It also confirmed the market need for central bank money to be used as a means of safe settlement for DLT-based transactions.
The findings of the exploratory work informed the Eurosystemdual-track strategy to advance DLT efforts throughPontes andAppia.
The Eurosystem provided three interoperability solutions for the exploratory work:
Thefull-DLT interoperability solution DL3S allows the settlement of wholesale financial transactions in central bank money in a DLT-based account held on a DLT platform provided by the Eurosystem.
TheTARGET Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) Hash-Link enables settlement of wholesale financial transactions in central bank money in accounts in a central bank-operated payment system – a copy of TIPS – via an application programming interface gateway.
TheTrigger Solution consists of a DLT infrastructure that acts as a technical bridge between T2 and market DLT platforms.
New Technologies for Wholesale settlement Contact Group
The New Technologies for Wholesale settlement Contact Group (NTW-CG) provides expert input to keep the Eurosystem up to date with advances in the use of distributed ledger technology and other new technologies in wholesale financial markets. The NTW-CG has no formal advisory or steering role with respect to the Eurosystem’s exploratory work.
To ensure openness and broad representation, membership is subject to an annual review. Market participants are welcome to express their interest in joining the NTW-CG by submitting anapplication form and relevant documentation to theNTW-CG Secretariat.