Who authorized that AI payment? Hong Kong puts agent identity on the agenda
Project SAGE will examine AI agents’ identities, delegated authority and payment use cases as financial services explore greater automation.
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Ethereum’s Hoodi upgrade delay keeps attention on testing
The Ethereum Foundation postponed Glamsterdam on the Hoodi testnet while developers investigate contract interactions. No new date was set in the notice.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.