Bank of France (representing the Eurosystem), Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Bank of Mexico, Swiss National Bank, Bank of England and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will seek to work in partnership with a large group of private financial firms convened by the Institute of International Finance (IIF). 

Project Agorá builds on the unified ledger concept proposed by the BIS and will investigate how tokenised commercial bank deposits can be "seamlessly integrated with tokenised wholesale central bank money in a public-private programmable core financial platform."

According to BIS, this could "enhance the functioning of the monetary system and provide new solutions using smart contracts and programmability, while maintaining its two-tier structure." 

The BIS will issue a call for expressions of interest to private financial institutions to join Project Agorá. 

The project tested the cross-border trading and settlement of wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs) between financial institutions, using new decentralised finance (DeFi) technology concepts on a public blockchain.

The project’s proof of concept successfully tested the cross-border trading and settlement of hypothetical euro, Singapore dollar and Swiss franc wCBDCs between simulated financial institutions. The process relied on three elements: 

• A common technical token standard provided by a public blockchain to facilitate exchange and interoperability between the different currencies.
• Bridges for the seamless transfer of wCBDCs between different networks.
• An Automated Market Maker (AMM), which is a specific type of decentralized exchange to trade and settle spot FX transactions automatically. 

The central bank said these experiments show "the operational feasibility and practical implementation of the three models it has conceptualised for issuing wCBDC directly on DLT: (1) the interoperability model, (2) the distribution model and (3) the integration model."

They all address "key aspects of wholesale CBDC implementation and each model offers different capabilities and functionalities compared to the conventional systems, so they can be complementary rather than exclusive."
 
This report highlights the following takeaways:

Key policy takeaways

1. Issuing a wholesale CBDC, as a complement to a retail CBDC, would contribute to the singleness of money by ensuring the anchoring value of central bank money for both retail and wholesale payments, and convertibility between the different forms of private money..

2. International cooperation and public-private partnerships remain a priority to converge towards a more globally inclusive and interoperable wholesale CBDC framework.

3. Interoperability should be prioritised to ensure seamless data and transaction exchange between DLT-based and conventional infrastructures.

4. Climate-related concerns highlight the need to develop energy-efficient solutions in the design of wholesale CBDCs.

Key technical takeaways

5. Technological advancements related to DLT offer various means for central banks to maintain control over their wholesale CBDC.

6. Central banks should remain technologically neutral while actively contributing to the adoption of common standards.

7. DLT could enhance the straight-through processing of trade and post-trade activities and contribute to overall financial stability.

8. Continued experiments at domestic and international level are essential to advance our analysis and our efforts to develop an operational framework through a learning-by-doing approach.