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The Italian Banking Association tests two styles of wholesale CBDC – Ledger Insights
Last year the Italian Banking Association (ABI) said it will test a wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC), Leonidas project, within a sandbox of the Bank of Italy. He released the test results last week, declaring it a success. The main advantages were atomic transactions, transparency and traceability of information.
The tests were conducted in 2023 and planned in front of the Eurosystems wholesale DLT tests with central bank money were announced.
While other wCBDC studies often involve tests on securities settlement, the ABI focused on the settlement of interbank transactions. It has the distinction of launching one of the first mass DLT banking implementations, Check Projectthe interbank reconciliation process entered into production in 2020 with almost 100 Italian banks.
It’s no surprise that Spunta is present in one of Leonida’s two use cases. Spunta uses DLT to automate interbank reconciliations, providing balances due or owed between banks. As part of the Leonidas Project, a wholesale CBDC was used to automatically settle interbank balances.
The second use case was for automated cash-in-transit settlement. Each bank stores cash in dedicated deposits managed by a cash management company. This way they can distribute cash to their branches. However, sometimes one bank is short and another has excess liquidity. Then the money is moved between their vaults. This leaves a debt between the banks, which is usually settled with a bank transfer. For the test, the interbank cash movement was automatically settled using the wCBDC.
Two different wCBDC models
The study used two different wholesale CBDC models. Last year the Banque de France pointed out three wCBDC models. In the integration model, wholesale CBDC is issued on the same platform as other assets. The integration model was used to settle Spunta’s interbank balances using ABILabChain. This is similar to the live pilots of Swiss National Bank, where the wCBDC is issued on the SDX blockchain. The ABI said there were “challenges” arising from integrating two distinct networks. So he explored an alternative.
The Cash in Transit test involved the interoperability model. In this case, there are two separate DLTs. One has the wCBDC and the registry is updated with the change in ownership of the wCBDC. The other blockchain is where the assets reside, recording changes in cash ownership. It is essential that the two changes occur simultaneously. The ABI stated that on a technical level a blocking component is necessary to ensure the synchronicity of the protocol.
Meanwhile, participants in the trial included ABI, 16 banks, blockchain company R3, Spunta’s technology partner NTT Data and Milano Hub, the innovation hub of the Bank of Italy.