The Norges Bank, Norway’s central bank, has announced that Norway’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) prototype infrastructure is based on Ethereum technology. The open source sandbox for the new central bank digital currency is now available on GitHub.
According to the announcement, the Ethereum cryptocurrency system was chosen to offer a “core infrastructure” for the “issuance, distribution, and destruction” of digital central bank money, or DSP.
The sandbox includes a unique frontend written in React, a filterable overview, and network monitoring tools like BlockScout and Grafana, and the necessary smart contracts and access controls to enable features like minting, burning and transferring ERC-20 tokens. Advanced use cases like batch payments, security tokens and bridges, will be introduced in the future.
The published version, however, does not support MetaMask, as it’s only intended for keystore files. The sandbox also has a role-based access control, only admitting users with the proper credentials. As a result, transactions on the test network are private.
At its present state, anyone can access the CBDC sandbox code by insantiating a runtime through the default Docker images, but only Lasse Meholm at Norges Bank can provide users access to the complete CBDC environment.
The Norges Bank has been testing various designed for their anticipated CDBC for two years, noting that ‘interoperability’ was their highest priority while assessing the different solutions available today. In their blog post, Nahmii AS said they are proud to be working with Norges Bank and other institutions on this prestigious project and hope that our work together will help to set new standards for public-private partnerships.”
According to the latest IMF report, there are 100 CBDCs available as of July 2022, 15 of which are still in the testing phase.
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