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Engineer sources told The Block that R3 is finding it hard to manage or support its growing client base, insinuating the company is flogging software that isn't fully baked yet.

A group of 11 banks, including NatWest and Deutsche Bank, have been trialling a distributed ledger technology (DLT) based platform for intraday FX swaps. The trial used technology from Finteum, which has been working on a DLT-based intraday FX swaps platform first announced with R3 and Fnality in 2019. During the trial, the banks engaged in simulated trading and discussion sessions. The plan now is to move to live transactions later this year or early in 2022.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, Bank of France and Swiss National Bank launched Project Jura that, together with a private sector consortium led by Accenture, will conduct an experiment using wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) for cross-border settlement on a distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform. The private sector consortium includes Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange and UBS. It will involve the exchange of financial instruments against a euro wCBDC through a delivery versus payment (DvP) settlement mechanism and the exchange of a euro wCBDC against a Swiss franc wCBDC through a payment versus payment (PvP) settlement mechanism. These transactions will be settled between banks domiciled in France and in Switzerland, respectively.

Launched in mid-2018, we.trade is ahead of rivals like Marco Polo, a trade finance blockchain backed by TradeIX and R3 that's still in the pilot stage. The we.trade platform is now all about commercial adoption and it's taking a two-pronged approach: attract more banks and onboard more SMEs.

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking is set to begin utilizing R3's Marco Polo trade finance blockchain on a commercial basis by the end of the year. A cross-border proof-of-concept test was successfully completed involving Mitsui & Co, a Japanese general trading company, Indorama Ventures, a Thai company in the intermediate petrochemicals business, and Bangkok Bank.

Deutsche Boerse and Swisscom utilize different blockchain protocols to settle securities transactions by exchanging cash tokens for tokenized shares in a joint proof of concept involving R3's Corda and IBM's Hyperledger Fabric.

Saudi Arabia's International Islamic Trade Finance Corporation (ITFC) partnered with the Bangladesh-based City Bank to execute the world's first Shariah-compliant cross-border blockchain transaction. A letter of credit was issued on behalf of a Bangladeshi exporter Debonair group to import textile-related accessories from Apparel Link, a trading company based in Hong Kong. Contour, a network build by R3's Corda blockchain technology, executed the transaction.

The South African Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group (IFWG) launched 'Project Khokha 2' to explore the use of tokenised money, blockchains and wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) in South Africa. The CBDC will use R3's Corda enterprise blockchain, and the settlement token and debenture will use a variant of Cosmos blockchain interoperability solution. Accenture will be responsible for tokenizing the wholesale CBDC on Corda. Block Markets Africa will help with distributed ledger technology, tokenizing the bonds and the wholesale payment token using its custom Cosmos-based solution. And Deloitte will document the insights. Other participants in the trials will include commercial banks Absa, FirstRand, Investec, Nedbank, and Standard Bank, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), and Strate, South Africa's central securities depository.

Tobias Adrian, a financial counselor and director of the IMF's Monetary and Capital Markets Department, gave a keynote address last week at the "Building CBDC: A Race To Reality" conference, sponsored by blockchain software firm R3. Adrian offered two models for the provision of a CBDC, varying in how they would pair the private sector with central banks. The first model looked at synthetic CBDCs (sCBDC), which are backed by the liabilities of a central bank but issued with the aid of a private entity, such as a commercial bank. The second, "two-tiered," model puts central banks in charge of the issuance of a CBDC and transaction settlement, with technology likely to be occasionally updated. As such, the sCBDC model would spur private sector-led innovation at a more "fundamental level," he said.

The InterWork Alliance (IWA) launched operations as a platform-neutral, non-profit organization dedicated to creating the standards frameworks needed to increase innovation across token-enabled ecosystems. The new organization already has 36 members, including tech firms such as Accenture, IBM, and Microsoft; banking and exchange firms ING, Nasdaq, SDX, and UBS; and, blockchain companies Digital Asset, Neo Global Development, Hedera Hashgraph and R3.

According to the Italian Banking Association (ABI) about 100 Italian banks are operating on the country's Spunta banking blockchain network, built on R3's Corda. Spunta is a project created by ABI Labs, which began trialing interbank transfers on Corda as early as 2018.

Phase 2 of the Riksbank's e-krona central bank digital currency (CBDC) project is now complete. Proof of concept work included investigating how banks and other payment service providers could be integrated into an e-krona network (in collaboration with Handelsbanken and Tietoevry) and whether and how an e-krona might function off-line.  The tests have shown, for instance, that it is possible to integrate a potential e-krona into the internal systems the banks have today, and this would make it possible for their customers to exchange money in their bank account for e-kronor, and vice versa. The tests of the R3 Corda-based technical solution have also shown that it would be possible to transact in e-krona when temporarily offline.

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has launched a project to develop ways to directly connect central banks and securities depositories in the ASEAN+3 region within a blockchain network. The region consists of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus Japan, the People's Republic of China, and the Republic of Korea. ADB is partnering with ConsenSys, Fujitsu, R3, and Soramitsu on the project, which will also examine systems interoperability and the viability of central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the region.

The Bank for International Settlements, Bank of France and Swiss National Bank have shown that wholesale CBDC can be used to settle transactions between financial institutions across borders. The recently completed Project Jura explored settling FX transactions in euro and Swiss franc wholesale CBDC, and issuing, transferring and redeeming tokenized euro-denominated French commercial paper between French and Swiss financial institutions. Project Jura was conducted in collaboration with Accenture, Credit Suisse, Natixis, R3, SIX Digital Exchange and UBS.

The National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan plans to conduct a comprehensive study of the benefits and risks of issuing retail central bank digital currency (CBDC). It will start with the definition of the tasks solved by the digital currency, the method of its emission and distribution, the technology used, the impact on monetary policy, financial stability and the payment ecosystem. [December 2021:] The National Bank of the Republic of Kazakhstan published the results of the first phase of its digital tenge (DT) retail CBDC pilot project. The first phase included proof-of-concept (PoC) testing based on R3's Corda distributed ledger technology-based platform. The PoC tested basic DT life cycle scenarios, from emission/distribution to purchases and transfers. Also, potential DT users were surveyed and interviewed to clarify priorities and needs in the development of new payment instruments.

In August the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) DLT-based Project Ion platform for stock settlement went into production. The R3 Corda-based platform runs in parallel with the DTC's classic settlement system, which remains the definitive record. At this stage, Project Ion is designed to only deal with bilateral equity transactions but is already processing an average of 100,000 transactions per day.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and Bank Indonesia announced the 21 shortlisted finalists for the G20 TechSprint CBDC challenge. The shortlisted teams now have until the end of August to complete their prototypes, which will then be judged by an independent expert panel convened by Bank Indonesia. Winners for each of the three categories will be announced in October ahead of the G20 Summit. Among the shortlisted were BitMint, R3, Ripple, S.e.A. (Stellar, eCurrency and ANZ), Bitt-IDEMIA, Crunchfish, and Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) Filia.

R3's Jack Fletcher does a nice dismantling of the dystopian case against central bank digital currency (CBDC). First he points out that there are technical solutions to privacy available through distributed ledger technology (DLT) infrastructure that far surpass anything that is available in existing digital solutions, so a CBDC could be as private as cash. Secondly, in a world of payment options, why would anyone use a surveillance CBDC when they could simply use Visa or Mastercard or cash instead? And access to cash is something that no government or central bank is keen to remove. Indeed, they must now step in as consumer preferences drive it to redundancy. But with cash use declining as a global trend, Jack does acknowledge that society must consider a future world whereby it no longer exists and our privacy and our freedom to disobey is removed with it.

"AMM and decentralized liquidity pools are the subject of ongoing exploration by central banks. There is great interest in adapting the control mechanisms created by DeFi for CBDC liquidity management. We show that this is possible with some refinement and careful design, though important questions remain to be considered."

The National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic (NBKR) has received proposals from twelve firms to develop and test a demo version of a digital som central bank digital currency (CBDC). The NBKR will select from Axellect, DCM, EMTECH, FIS, G+D Filia GmbH, Knox Networks, MONTRAN,Nahmii, Ltd, R3 Corda, SICPA/Nabatech, TCS Quartz, and Xiamen Strait Chain Technology. The selection criteria will focus on blockchain platform technology.