The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the central banks of France, Singapore, and Switzerland have recently announced the successful completion of a new CBDC initiative called Project Mariana. This project tested cross-border trading and settlement of wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs) between financial institutions.The project leverages the concepts of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) technology on a public blockchain, potentially bringing a new era in the digital currency world. The consortium of central banks discussed the establishment of a standardized technical token and creating bridges to facilitate seamless wCBDC transfers. They also delved into the Automated Market Maker (AMM) concept, enabling automatic pricing and execution of spot FX transactions.The inclusion of DeFi technology could pave the way for a new generation of financial market infrastructures. Project Mariana’s architecture balances central banks’ domestic need for oversight and the interest of financial institutions to hold, transfer, and settle wCBDC across borders efficiently.The Director General for Financial Stability and Operations at Banque de France, Emmanuelle Assouan, said: “Mariana is a novel experiment in several aspects. We have developed a practical solution to exchange multi-CBDCs in a global network interoperable with regional platforms on which the CBDC of each jurisdiction is issued. This could be a forerunner for the functioning of cross-border payments in the future.”Last year, BIS collaborated with several other central banks from Hong Kong SAR, Thailand, mainland China, and the United Arab Emirates to complete a cross-border digital currency pilot. The mBridge involved around 20 banks conducting 164 payment and foreign exchange transactions over six weeks, with transactions exceeding $22 million settled directly on the mBridge platform.This year’s involvement in the CBDC test marks more strides towards using blockchain for settlements by the BIS. However, more experiments and trials will continue. Project Mariana is a cornerstone in improving cross-border payments and will likely feature at the Banque de France conference on Oct. 3.

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Information	Details
Geography	Europe
Countries	🇫🇷 🇸🇬 🇨🇭
Sentiment	neutral
Relevance Score	8
People	Emmanuelle Assouan, Banque de France
Companies	Bank for International Settlements, Monetary Authority of Singapore, Swiss National Bank, BIS Innovation Hub, Banque de France
Currencies	Swiss Franc, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Euro, Singapore Dollar
Securities	None