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After China rolled out the pilot test of its sovereign digital currency, or Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) last April, commercial banks have continuously come up with new design ideas for hardware wallets to be used with the new "Digital Yuan".

Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) have recently gained more attention for being one of blockchain's most exciting use cases, and the hype is well founded. In concept, DIDs aim to use cutting-edge cryptography and unique identifiers to enable users to validate themselves online, while still dictating when and how that identity data is used. Put simply, Decentralized IDs have the potential to help internet users around the world wrest back control of their data from the corporations that presently control it.

Some have called for caution with regards to China's digital currency, with the urgency to rush through Beijing's own plan now lessened as Libra, which is perceived by Beijing as a major threat to China's financial sovereignty, faces major regulatory obstacles worldwide.

UK-based L3COS has submitted a proposal to the Bank of England for a blockchain-based operating system to power a central bank-issued digital currency (CBDC). The L3COS platform uses a triple-layer consensus system which has the laws and regulations of each sovereign authority built into the technology. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/l3cos-proposes-to-build-the-worlds-first-regulated-blockchain-based-operating-system-for-the-bank-of-england-301075011.html

L3COS enables the digitalization of society's transactions, ensuring they are fast, safe, verifiable, regulated, transparent, efficient and legal. Using its unique triple layer consensus system, it enables Sovereigns to digitalize transactions faster, more effectively, with greater transparency and stronger security. Its blockchain technology is immutable, fully auditable, traceable, and transparent, making fraud, money laundering or other black-market financing impossible. L3COS brings the benefits of blockchain to the wider economy, corporations and individuals for the first time.

China needs to become the first nation to issue a digital currency in its push to internationalise the yuan and reduce its dependence on the global dollar payment system, a commentary published in the People's Bank of China's China Finance magazine. It said the rights to issue and control a digital currency would become a "new battlefield" of competition between sovereign countries. The article also argued that the improved data feedback from a digital currency would help enhance monetary policy transmission. [http://www.chinafph.com/]

February 13, 2021, Bitt, in partnership with the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB), executed the first successful retail central bank digital currency (CBDC) consumer-to-merchant transaction using DCash, the ECCB digital currency. The transaction was completed at Geo F. Huggins' Foodland, in the island of Grenada. The ECCB has begun to issue DCash to participating financial institutions to enable customer purchases at selected merchants, as part of the closed segment of the DCash pilot. This live exercise is the final step before the public launch in four of the ECCU's eight sovereign member countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Saint Lucia).

Here's a CBDC Tracker covers similar territory. The main difference is that it includes wholesale CBDC and some initial sovereign offerings (ISOs) such as the Marshall Islands SOV and Venezuelan Petro. Also it includes projects that are arguably simply central bank run blockchain-based payment rails (eg Cambodia's Project Inthanon). Finally, as far as I can tell, the tabulation doesn't include links to the official (or unofficial) sources of the information. But, on the other hand, it includes some useful information that doesn't fit my more compact presentation, like announcement date, status, technology, and programmability.

This paper discusses the pros of adopting government-issued digital currencies as well as a supranational digital iCurrency. One such pro is to get rid of paper money (and coinage), a ubiquitous medium for spreading germs, as highlighted by the recent coronavirus outbreak. It sets forth three policy recommendations for adapting mobile devices as new digital wallets, regulatory oversight of sovereign digital currencies and user data protection, and a supranational digital iCurrency for facilitating international digital monetary linkages.

European Central Bank Executive Board member Fabio Panetta is not keen to allow stablecoin issuers to invest their reserve assets in the form of risk-free deposits at the central bank. "It would be tantamount to outsourcing the provision of central bank money, and could endanger monetary sovereignty if, as a result, the stablecoin were to largely displace sovereign money as a means of payment. Money would then be reduced to a 'club good' offered in return for the payment of a fee or membership of a platform."

"Recent innovations in self-sovereign identity and zero-knowledge cryptography, along with proper ecosystem design, allow for a novel approach to know-your-customer (KYC) that protects the customer's privacy without reducing transparency. The proposed solution concept, zkKYC, removes the need for the customer to share any personal information with a regulated business for the purpose of KYC, and yet provides the transparency to allow for a customer to be identified if and when that is ruled necessary by a designated governing entity (e.g. regulator, law enforcement). This approach breaks the traditional privacy vs. transparency trade-off and provides structured transparency, resulting in a net positive outcome for all parties involved."

"Sovereign Wallet Network (SWN) seeks to address the un-federated nature of digital currencies while also solving the scalability trilemma of the blockchain industry. MetaMUI is the 1st Identity-based blockchain to truly enable regulated, identity-based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) transactions, it can be used as the cornerstone for most financial offerings, with its high versatility and support for custom-developed use cases that enable Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) implementation and issuance easily on the MetaMUI CBDC platform."

The FTX collapse was a failure of centralized finance (CeFi), not decentralized finance (DeFi). If there is a silver lining for the FTX fiasco, it is a reminder of the importance of decentralization. Like the financial institutions that collapsed in 2008, the CeFi economic incentive is to under-collateralize and take risks with user funds, play political games, and cozying up to regulators. DeFi platforms are designed to preserve the benefits introduced by Bitcoin and magnified by Ethereum: permissionless, transparency, censorship resistance and self-sovereign custody of assets.

"The Regulated Liability Network (RLN) is a contribution to the global debate on the future of money offered by a group of industry participants. It explores the technical, legal and business characteristics necessary to provide on-chain, 24*7 programmable, final settlement in sovereign currencies, consisting of the liabilities of both public and private regulated financial institutions. These activities could enable a more functionally rich financial system that is compliant with all existing laws and regulations."

Magyar Nemzeti Bank has collaborated with the Sovereign Official Digital Association (SODA) to issue non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on a private blockchain. By successfully participating in financial literacy quizzes, Hungarian coin collectors and NFT enthusiasts are being awarded central bank-issued tokens and then swapping and trading them on the Money Museum mobile application. This is part of a contest to win a set of limited edition commemorative coins. As any member of the public can use the blockchain to collect, swap and register their ownership of the coins, this type of activity - though gamified - this is arguably a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot.

An overseas territory or dependency is a region with ties abroad to a sovereign nation-not a completely independent state, but also not a constituent part or administrative subdivision of the parent country. This graphic maps the overseas territories of various countries, using a variety of sources including WorldAtlas, Statista, and official country releases. There are a total of 71 overseas territories listed on the map spread across the world.

Bank Indonesia continues to research central bank digital currency (CBDC) and plans to issue a white paper at the end of this year concerning the development of a Digital Rupiah. The central bank's CBDC exploration has six salient objectives: (i) providing a risk-free means of digital payment using central bank money, (ii) mitigating the risk of non-sovereign digital currency, (iii) expanding payment system coverage and efficiency, including cross-border transactions, (iv) expanding and accelerating financial inclusion, (v) providing new monetary policy instruments, and (vi) facilitating the distribution of fiscal subsidies.

The Financial Services and Markets Bill 2022 has been introduced into the U.K. Parliament. Section 22 of the Bill contains a new power for the government to introduce bespoke rules on the regulation of payments, payment systems and service providers in relation to the payments that include "digital settlement assets", which includes any digital representation of value or rights that "(a) can be used for the settlement of payment obligations; (b) can be transferred, stored or traded electronically, and (c) uses technology supporting the recording or storage of data (which may include distributed ledger technology)." The Chancellor of the Exchequer said that HM Treasury will be working to understand how distributed ledger technology could be applied to a U.K. sovereign debt instrument.

"zkp-ID enables companies to guarantee user's privacy while adhering to compliance requirements. In four easy steps a user is authenticated and checked against compliance parameters. After that a zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) - wrapped in a self-sovereign identity (SSI) credential - is decentrally stored in the user wallet."

"We have built the most advanced CBDC ecosystem solution based on the concept of Chaum and Moser's eCash 2.0 that holds the promise of cash-like privacy. With our solution, Central Banks will be able to launch a sovereign digital currency that compliments hard-cash and supplements Commercial Bank money, helping them to maintain monetary and fiscal stability with greater control over the economy."