Ethereum-focused software company, ConsenSys, has secured a high-profile partnership with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) as the country pursues research into the feasibility of a wholesale central bank-backed digital currency (CBDC).
Other key members of the partnership include Commonwealth Bank, the National Australia Bank, and New-York based software company, Perpetual.
According to a press release by the RBA, the wholesale CBDC project will involve creating a proof-of-concept (POC) for the issuance of a tokenized CBDC. Such a token would be used by wholesale market participants to fund, settle, and repay a token syndicated loan deployed on the Ethereum network.
The RBA will hope to find out from the pilot program, the implications of a blockchain-based ‘atomic’ delivery-versus-payment system for the securities market. The partners will further explore the automated features associated with such an approach.
Michele Bullock, Assistant Governor of the RBA’s Financial System Unit, noted the main objectives of the partnerships in the release, saying:
With this project, we are aiming to explore the implications of a CBDC for efficiency, risk management and innovation in wholesale financial market transactions.
The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2020, while the partners will publish a report about their findings within the first half of 2021.
ConsenSys’s latest partnership with the Reserve Bank of Australia means the Ethereum-focused startup has now been shortlisted for two large scale CBDC projects within the space of a week.
Late last month, One of the developers of France Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot project, Societe Generale – Forge, also picked ConsenSys for its ongoing digital Euro experimental project.
Such large-scale involvements mean that the Ethereum network could reach mainstream adoption, expanding beyond its primary use case of serving developers within the crypto and blockchain ecosystem.
