The Bank Indonesia is working on a three phase central bank digital currency (CBDC) project for a digital rupiah. Like other central banks, the emphasis has shifted towards wholesale CBDC (wCBDC). Last week it published a paper on a technical proof of concept (PoC) for the wCBDC, comparing R3’s Corda enterprise blockchain and Ethereum-based Hyperledger Besu. It did not make a definitive choice, but described plans for further work. R3 was the partner for the Corda work and Kaleido for Besu.
At a big picture level, the first stage of the digital Rupia project is to conduct the basic issuance, redemption and funds transfer using a wCBDC. It views this PoC as part of that work. The second step is to explore integration between the wCBDC and a digital securities ledger, hence technical interoperability was also investigated as part of this report. The final stage will also use the wCBDC for cross border payments, and potentially as the foundation of a retail CBDC.
For the current work, initially the central bank created a long list of possible technologies, before whittling it down to five: Corda, Besu, Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Iroha and Quorum.
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