BIS Projects

Industry Initiatives

Project Mariana (2023)

Initiative Name	Project Mariana
Organization	The BIS Innovation Hub
Type	Lab
Description	Project Mariana looks to a future world where central banks have issued wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs) and explores novel options for tokenised FX trading and settlement. It aim at improving the effectiveness, safety and transparency of FX trading and settlement. The project contributes to two key dimensions: first, it combines FX trading and settlement in cross-border transactions into a single instantaneous step using wCBDCs, as one possible mechanism for eliminating credit and settlement risk. Second, given the diversity of technological solutions used in emerging domestic CBDC arrangements, it tests cross-border interoperability through wCBDC mobility beyond domestic boundaries and with a uniform technical wCBDC standard.
Ecosystem	Agnostic
Public Participants	Banque de France Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Swiss National Bank
Link	https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/cbdc/mariana.htm and https://www.bis.org/publ/othp_mariana.pdf

Project Icebreaker (2023)

Initiative Name	Project Icebreaker
Organization	The BIS Innovation Hub
Type	Lab
Description	Project Icebreaker explores the potential benefits and challenges of using retail CBDC in cross-border payments. It tested the technical feasibility of conducting cross-border/cross-currency transactions between different DLT-based CBDC proofs of concept. The aim was to gain a deeper understanding of the technologies used, and to identify the key technical and policy choices and trade-offs that central banks would need to consider in designing CBDC implementations that facilitate cross- border payments.
Ecosystem	Agnostic
Public Participants	Bank of Israel, Norges Bank, Sveriges Riksbank. BIS Innovation Hub.
Link	https://www.bis.org/publ/othp61.pdf

Project mBridge (2022)

Initiative Name	Project mBridge
Organization	The BIS Innovation Hub
Type	Tooling
Description	Multi-CBDC platform for international payments. Interoperable platform for international exchange of Blockchain-based CBDCs. Gearing up for Minimum Viable Product by 2024. Consortium expansion: 25 observing members, including the IMF and the World Bank.
Ecosystem	Ethereum
Public Participants	BIS, Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), Central Bank of The UAE, Digital Currency Institute of The People's Bank of China, Bank of Thailand and over 25 observing members.
Link	https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/cbdc/mcbdc_bridge.htm https://www.bis.org/innovation_hub/projects/mbridge_brochure_2311.pdf

Project Helvetica(2022)

Central bank money settlement with more tokenized financial assets over DLT.

•Multi-phase collaboration between BIS, Swiss National Bank (SNB) and SIX.

Project Dunbar

Shared platform for international settlements using digital currencies issued by multiple central banks.

Lead by the BIS, in collaboration with a number of central banks.

Project Jura

Wholesale CBDCs transfer between French and Swiss commercial banks on a single DLT platform.

Collaboration between Banque de France, BIS, Swiss National Bank and a private sector consortium.

"The only other similar research project I am aware of is a pilot project by the Reserve Bank of Australia (2023) which was announced in March 2023 and looks at a CBDC on a rollup to analyze tokenized FX settlement. Overall, the literature on CBDC design is growing, with several central banks conducting pilot projects or research on CBDCs. The BIS Innovation Hubs, in collaboration with many central banks, are conducting various CBDC design projects. For instance Mariana (2023), Dunbar (2022), Helvetia (2022), Jura (2021) or mBridge (2022) fall into the category of wholesale CBDC projects, some of which use distributed ledger technology. Furthermore, there are retail CBDC projects such as Rosalind (2023), Sela (2023) or Icebreaker (2023). Moreover, some countries have CBDC projects that are either in a pilot state, such as China’s e-CNY (2021) or India’s e-Rupee (2023), or already in operation, like the Bahama’s Sand Dollar (2019) or the Nigeria’s eNaira (2021). Norges Bank and Nahmii work on a sandbox project that also includes layer-2 solutions (Jacobo, 2022)."

Source: A Proposal for a Layer-2 CBDC on a Rollup - Remo Nyffenegger