The Bank of Greece has completed a simulated issuance of a sovereign digital bond on the distributed ledger platform operated by SWIAT, a Frankfurt based fintech founded by DekaBank and backed by LBBW and Standard Chartered. The exercise, named Project Sovereign, covered the full transaction lifecycle from issuance through secondary market trading, coupon payment and redemption, and was conducted under real market conditions with seven financial institutions participating as investors.
Berliner Volksbank, DekaBank, Eurobank, KfW, LBBW, National Bank of Greece, and Piraeus Bank took on investor roles. Notably, the Bank of Greece acted as both sovereign issuer and central securities depository, a dual role that reflects its real world function: the central bank operates Greece’s CSD for government securities, making Project Sovereign less a theoretical exercise than a practical rehearsal for live implementation.
Settlement used delivery versus payment, achieved through simulated EUR tokens on a dedicated environment in the absence of a wholesale central bank digital currency. The approach drew on the design of the ECB’s forthcoming Pontes wholesale digital payments initiative, with the asset and payment blockchains interoperating to execute DvP.
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