The paper promises behind development finance got a blockchain experiment
Project Promissa tested tokenized promissory notes to simplify how governments and development banks track financial commitments.
From the archive.
Past digital-money developments, explained in context. Event dates are preserved; these are newly written retrospectives, not breaking news.
Pectra’s wallet upgrade came with a powerful permission decision
Ethereum’s 2025 upgrade announcement described smart-account features enabled by delegating execution to contract code.
Uniswap v4 made liquidity pools more customizable—and more different
The 2025 release introduced hooks that let developers attach custom behaviour to pools, swaps, fees and liquidity positions.
Could a digital payment carry proof that its checks are complete?
Project Mandala explored embedding regulatory checks into cross-border transaction workflows while preserving institutional responsibility.
The local payment rails behind access to digital dollars in Latin America
Circle’s Brazil and Mexico announcement connected USDC access with PIX and SPEI, reducing reliance on overseas bank transfers.
A stablecoin sandbox place did not mean permission to take public money
Hong Kong’s first participant announcement drew a firm boundary between supervised testing and offering products to the public.
Tokenized funds need trustworthy numbers before they need more tokens
DTCC’s Smart NAV pilot examined how fund price and rate data could reach blockchain applications through a shared distribution process.
Tokenized gold arrived inside a banking app, not a public crypto wallet
HSBC’s Hong Kong launch showed how asset tokenization can operate through a private ledger and familiar banking channels.
Stellar’s payment network opened the door to programmable applications
Soroban’s 2024 mainnet launch added smart contracts to Stellar, extending what developers could build around digital assets and payments.
Tokenized deposits still need a way for banks to settle with each other
Hong Kong’s Project Ensemble began by examining the money needed to settle transactions involving tokenized commercial-bank deposits.
Ethereum’s blobs targeted a cost most users never see
Dencun’s announcement put temporary data blobs at the centre of efforts to reduce the cost of layer-two Ethereum transactions.
Digital-pound privacy moved from a design question to a legislative promise
The UK’s 2024 consultation response committed to legislation protecting privacy and control if a digital pound went ahead.
A token’s transfer rules can be built in from the start
Solana’s 2024 token-extension announcement highlighted configurable fees, permissions and issuer controls within its token programme.
Can digital cash protect privacy and prepare for quantum threats?
Project Tourbillon built prototypes to examine payer anonymity, quantum-safe security and the ability to process growing payment volumes.
Singapore’s 2023 Orchid trials explored money with payment conditions
Project Orchid examined wallet compatibility and conditional payments, alongside plans for wholesale central bank digital money.
Georgia’s digital-lari milestone was a partner selection, not a currency launch
The National Bank of Georgia chose Ripple for a pilot after reviewing execution plans and demonstrations of competing technology.
Hong Kong’s digital-money pilots found promise—and a scaling question
The first e-HKD pilot report highlighted programmability and atomic settlement while acknowledging the limits of controlled experiments.
Why a blockchain transfer is not automatically a cross-border capital flow
Project Atlas combined exchange information with blockchain data to explore the geography of crypto activity and its measurement limits.
When central banks tested a DeFi idea for foreign exchange
Project Mariana explored automated trading of hypothetical central bank currencies, borrowing a mechanism from decentralized finance.
Stablecoins need not mean dollars: EURC’s move onto Stellar
Circle expanded its euro-backed token to Stellar in 2023, adding another currency option for blockchain payments and wallet services.
Could a payment app work without ever holding your digital money?
Project Sela tested an intermediary model intended to widen access to retail CBDCs while keeping settlement at the central bank.
Your card purchase could settle in stablecoins without you buying crypto
Visa’s 2023 pilots used USDC behind the scenes to settle ordinary card payments with merchant payment providers.
The tokenization problem hiding between separate blockchains
Swift’s 2023 experiments explored connecting tokenized-asset networks through infrastructure financial institutions already used.
Australia’s CBDC pilot used a real claim on the central bank
The Australian research project went beyond a purely simulated token, exposing practical questions about digital-money experiments.
The five-business-day detail in Singapore’s stablecoin framework
Singapore’s 2023 framework announcement put redemption, reserves and disclosure at the centre of its proposed stablecoin label.
Palau’s stablecoin test started with employees and local shops
A controlled pilot paired volunteer government employees with selected merchants to test a dollar-backed digital payment instrument.
Gas-free swaps still have a cost: UniswapX changed who pays first
UniswapX’s 2023 beta moved transaction submission to competing fillers, with gas costs reflected in the quoted swap price.
Who gets to create a stablecoin? Aave’s GHO proposal made that explicit
The June 2023 launch proposal described facilitators with issuance limits, separating stablecoin creation from ordinary token transfers.
Digital cash without internet: the difficult promise behind offline CBDCs
The BIS Polaris handbook examined why offline payments require decisions about resilience, privacy, security and local needs.
Moving USDC between chains without creating another wrapped token
Circle’s first CCTP release used a burn-and-mint process to move native USDC between Ethereum and Avalanche.
Why Ethereum’s withdrawal upgrade mattered beyond staking rewards
The Shapella announcement described how validators would be able to move staked ETH from the Beacon Chain back to the execution layer.
The UAE’s digital-dirham strategy connected domestic money with trade settlement
The 2023 plan combined cross-border work, an India bridge experiment and proof-of-concept work on domestic digital currency.
A cross-border payment where the digital currency never leaves home
Project Icebreaker explored linking domestic CBDC systems through coordinated payments and competing foreign-exchange providers.
Japan’s digital-yen pilot was not a public shopping trial
The Bank of Japan’s 2023 pilot plan focused on connecting systems, while excluding actual transactions between shoppers and retailers.
How Hong Kong paired a tokenized green bond with digital cash in 2023
A look back at the HK$800 million issuance that connected tokenized securities and cash claims on a private blockchain.
A digital pound without interest: why the UK proposal focused on payments
The 2023 consultation described a potential public digital currency accessed through private wallets, with limits on holdings.
When stablecoins became a delivery route for humanitarian assistance
UNHCR’s Ukraine pilot explored distributing assistance through a digital wallet while preserving a route back to local cash.
The stablecoin use case that starts with cash at a shop counter
MoneyGram’s 2022 rollout connected participating retail agents and Stellar wallets, creating a route between physical cash and USDC.
Digital money where the network disappears: Ghana’s offline eCedi test
A 2022 central-bank speech described testing consecutive digital payments without connectivity, with financial inclusion as a core objective.
South Africa tested two kinds of money for one tokenized market
Project Khokha 2 examined central-bank digital money and commercial-bank settlement tokens in a market for tokenized debt securities.
Project Dunbar’s 2022 prototypes tested a shared home for multiple CBDCs
Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa explored direct cross-border settlement through a shared digital-currency platform.
Nigeria’s eNaira announcement treated launch as the beginning of the work
The central bank’s October 2021 release scheduled activation while promising further capabilities and attention to rural and unbanked users.
The wallet proposal that worked around a full Ethereum protocol change
ERC-4337 proposed a separate flow for smart-account operations, allowing wallet innovation through higher-level infrastructure.
Germany’s 2021 test linked blockchain securities to existing central bank money
A German settlement experiment showed how a technical bridge could connect digital securities to conventional payment infrastructure.