In a collaborative effort, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the central banks of France, Singapore, and Switzerland successfully completed testing for cross-border trading and settlement involving wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), The Bank for International Settlements said in a report on September 28.
Dubbed “Project Mariana,” this initiative was jointly developed by Banque de France, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the Swiss National Bank, all operating under the auspices of the BIS. Project Mariana focused on assessing the viability of cross-border trading and settlement involving hypothetical CBDCs denominated in euros, Singapore dollars, and Swiss francs. The testing leveraged concepts from decentralized finance (DeFi) technology and utilized a public blockchain.
The core concept relied on the implementation of a common token standard on a public blockchain, the establishment of bridges for seamless CBDC transfer between different networks, and the use of a specific type of decentralized exchange to facilitate automatic spot foreign exchange transactions, the report said.
The participants in the project deemed it a success, although they acknowledged the need for further research and experimentation. The report emphasized that Project Mariana was purely experimental and should not be interpreted as an indication that any of the partner central banks intend to issue CBDCs or endorse DeFi or a particular technological solution.
