Ripple is piloting a private version of the public, open-source XRP Ledger that provides Central Banks a secure, controlled and flexible solution for the issuance and management of digital currencies.
With over 80% of Central Banks actively exploring some form of sovereign-backed cryptocurrency, new Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) are bound to emerge. Each new CBDC will have unique goals driven by the specific market challenges and opportunities of its country, unavoidably leading to different technologies and implementations — leaving the world with an array of CBDC solutions.
CBDC Challenges
Distributed ledger technology will be the basis for most CBDCs, just as it is for today’s cryptocurrencies. While Central Banks can tap into existing blockchains to get CBDCs up and running quickly, most ledgers are not built for payments and cannot handle the volume of transactions that a successful retail CBDC will require.
Most blockchains are public ledgers, visible to all and updated by a broad network of validators. A Central Bank requires more transaction privacy and control over its currency than a public ledger can offer, so will most likely opt to create a CBDC on a private ledger that can also operate at the required scale.
Additionally, interoperability – the ability for a private ledger to connect with today’s existing global financial infrastructure, as well as other CBDCs and other digital currencies– will be critical. In fact, in its 2021/22 innovation program, the Bank for International Settlements identified interoperability for cross-border payments as a major priority for CBDCs.
The CBDC Private Ledger
The CBDC Private Ledger is based on the same blockchain technology that powers the XRP Ledger (XRPL), which means that the CBDC Private Ledger is built for payments.
This also means the CBDC Private Ledger is designed for issuing currencies, with over 5,400 currencies issued on the XRPL over the past 8 years, including its native digital asset XRP — which can be leveraged as a neutral bridge asset for frictionless value movement between CBDCs and other currencies.
Moving money on the CBDC Private Ledger will be cost-effective, reliable and close to instantaneous. Transactions can also happen at volumes required by Central Banks. The CBDC Private Ledger will handle tens of thousands of transactions per second (TPS) initially with the potential to scale to hundreds of thousands TPSs over time.
Transactions on the CBDC Private Ledger are verified by the same consensus protocol used by the XRP Ledger, which is far less energy intensive, and therefore less expensive and 61,000 times more efficient than public blockchains that leverage proof-of-work.
In addition to leveraging the XRP Ledger technology, the CBDC Private Ledger is also supported by RippleNet technologies, and the Interledger suite of protocols to enable ultra-high throughput use-cases such as micro-payments.
The CBDC Private Ledger meets even the highest of security standards for Central Banks with each having complete sovereignty and ability to customize based on their own unique privacy and policy requirements. The core technology behind this new CBDC Private Ledger has been running for more than 8 years without incident and with billions of dollars of value transacted everyday.
Time to Define the Future of Money
Ripple has a proven track record of successfully connecting disparate payment systems, championing blockchain’s utility to solve for global payments and is trusted by hundreds of financial institutions around the world.
We are currently engaged with Central Banks around the world to better understand their goals and assess how the CBDC Private Ledger can help achieve them.
We believe this solution will overcome the major challenges around creating and managing a sovereign digital currency, while amplifying the value and benefits for Central Banks, their partners and, above all, the millions of people who will use it.
And we’re just getting started. We are also working on a fresh approach where Central Banks will be able to join a network of CBDC Ledgers that enables full settlement interoperability, while allowing each member to retain their monetary and technological independence. We believe this will be a game-changer for Central Banks and are excited to release more details on how it works very soon.
Get in touch with cbdc@ripple.com to find out how your organization can get involved, and let’s define the future of money together.
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