The Mariana Project has verified the operation of cross-border trading and settlement between financial institutions of wholesale Central Bank Digital Currencies (wCBDCs), which use new decentralised finance (DeFi) technology concepts on a public blockchain.

The test of cross-border trade and settlement of wCBDSs, in euro, Singapore dollar and Swiss franc, between simulated financial institutions, was successful. The process included, among others, a common token standard and an Automated Market Maker (AMM), which is a specific type of decentralised exchange used to trade and settle FX spot transactions automatically.

The AMM combined the liquidity of hypothetical wCBDCs with innovative algorithms enabling the valuation, automatic execution and immediate settlement of spot FX transactions. The protocols could be used by the next generation of financial market infrastructures, which facilitate cross-border trading and settlement between financial institutions.

Since tokenisation and DeFi technologies are still developing dynamically, the BIS Innovation Hub and its global partners will continue to research the benefits and challenges of those technologies.

Source: https://www.bis.org/about/bisih/topics/cbdc/mariana.htm i https://www.mas.gov.sg/news/media-releases/2023/bis-and-central-banks-successfully-test-cross-border-wholesale-cbdcs