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This paper surveys DLT-based wholesale CBDC experiments with completed proof-of-concept prototypes from across the world for which there is publicly-available information. It also seems to cover projects that go beyond CBDCs into private-sector projects. But it looks to provide a possibly useful classification framework for CBDCs and use cases in the financial services industry.

China's largest state-owned banks have reportedly started testing the "electronic wallet" component of the People's Bank of China's (PBOC's) "digital yuan" project. The tests are being conducted in cities including Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong. The municipal government of Shenzhen said it would cooperate in efforts to test the system for different applications. Banks are testing the e-wallet application to transfer money and make payments using the PBoC's digital yuan. The e-wallet, which can be downloaded as a mobile application, will be linked to a user's national ID number or telephone number to enable fund transfers.

COVID-19 and the Great Lockdown triggered a mass migration from analog to digital and highlighted that access to the Internet is crucial for socioeconomic inclusion. However, Internet usage remains a luxury: half of the world's population does not have access to the Internet, either through a mobile device or through fixed line broadband. The digital divide - the gap between those who have Internet access and those who don't - is more like a chasm, both within and between countries.

The BIS Innovation Hub published a brochure for its mBridge project with a comprehensive list of use cases contributed by 22 commercial banks across four different jurisdictions (China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates). The mBridge trial platform has shown that CBDCs can substantially increase the speed of cross-border payments from multiple days to near real-time, while also reducing cost. The project is using an agile and iterative development approach, plus a modular bricks design.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) will reportedly launch a pilot of its e-nairu that will be run on the "two-tier" model whereby the central bank designs and distributes the digital currency (CBDC) and regulated financial institutions provide it to individuals and businesses. The CBN hopes that this strategy will help it "address interoperability risks that might be associated with the implementation." The CBN reckons the risk of financial disintermediation can be addressed via the imposition of limits on e-naira holdings.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York's New York Innovation Center (NYIC) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced Project Cedar Phase II x Ubin+, a joint experiment to investigate how wholesale central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could improve the efficiency of cross-border wholesale payments involving multiple currencies. Project Cedar Phase II x Ubin+ will enhance designs for atomic settlement of cross-border cross-currency transactions, leveraging wholesale CBDCs as a settlement asset.

The Banca d'Italia published a paper that evaluates two solutions for synchronizing the asset-leg and the cash-leg of a DvP (delivery versus payment) transaction on distributed ledger technology (DLT) rails. Both use the Target Instant Payment Settlement (TIPS) platform to provide the settlement services of the cash leg. The experiments showed that the proposed implementations can effectively contribute to safer and more efficient settlement of DvP trades, enabling interoperability with a wide array of DLT platforms, and different degrees of integration effort compared to other already established approaches. The implemented solutions preserve the atomic nature of a DvP transaction, building a "bridge" between the DLT asset management platform and the central bank payment system. In accomplishing this task, this architecture offers the potential to standardize communications with DLTs and, crucially, avoid the need to issue central bank money as cash tokens on DLTs - a key point of other approaches - thus preserving the central bank's control over the cash-leg of the DvP.

The Digital Dollar Project (DPP) announced today the launch of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) Technical Sandbox Program. It will serve as a collaborative space for the DDP participants and financial service providers, offering a neutral environment for the evaluation of technological, business, and policy approaches to CBDCs. Program participants will examine real-world technology, explore potential implications to business strategies and operations, and experiment to uncover possible use-case specific solutions. It is is slated to begin in early October with the inaugural cohort focused on cross-border payments.

"We propose an offline payment system (OPS) protocol for CBDC that allows a user to make digital payments to another user while both users are temporarily offline and unable to connect to payment intermediaries (or even the Internet). OPS can be used to instantly complete a transaction involving any form of digital currency over a point-to-point channel without communicating with any payment intermediary, achieving virtually unbounded throughput and real-time transaction latency. "

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) published a white paper on the first phase of its Global Layer One (GL1) tokenization initiative. GL1 is envisaged as a public permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) network developed by regulated institutions for use by the financial industry across jurisdictions to deploy inherently interoperable digital asset applications, governed by common standards and technology for assets, smart contracts, and digital identities. Financial institutions will be able to develop, deploy and use applications for financial industry use cases along the value chain, such as issuance, distribution, trading and settlement, custody, asset servicing, and payments. The whitepaper details the design principles, objectives, considerations and potential uses of GL1. GL1 plans to expand collaboration with more policymakers, central banks, regulators, international standards setting bodies and financial institutions as work on GL1 progresses.