Chainlink and banking consortia from Europe and South Korea have launched Project Pangea to develop real-time stablecoin-based settlement for global FX markets.
Chainlink has announced Project Pangea, a collaborative initiative with two multinational banking consortia aimed at developing real-time, atomic settlement infrastructure for global foreign exchange markets. The initiative brings together UniKA, a Korean coalition comprising Shinhan Bank, JB Bank, Kbank, FairSquareLab, and OBDIA, alongside more than ten participating Korean commercial banks, and Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks. The participating institutions collectively represent more than USD 10 trillion in assets under management.
Project Pangea focuses on enabling direct atomic Payment-versus-Payment swaps of regulated EUR and KRW stablecoins, targeting T+0 settlement as an alternative to the T+2 model that currently governs most FX transactions.
Technical architecture
The project is structured across three layers. The banking layer uses Swift and ISO 20022 messaging standards, allowing participating institutions to connect using existing infrastructure. The connectivity layer uses Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) for secure stablecoin transfers across networks, and Chainlink Data Streams for high-speed FX market data to power an on-chain pricing engine. The settlement layer operates on FairSquareLab's Pangea L1 blockchain - a settlement-dedicated network designed as neutral infrastructure independent of any single country or bank - where FX settlement smart contracts are deployed, and atomic swaps execute.
FairSquareLab's on-chain FX settlement technology anchors price discovery to FX oracle quotes rather than a bonding curve, minimising slippage for large-scale interbank currency conversion. A key design feature of the Pangea L1 is that oracle data updates are guaranteed to execute ahead of every other transaction in a block, ensuring all FX swaps settle against current market prices.
Market context and settlement risk
The global FX market processes more than USD 9.6 trillion in daily trading volume, yet cross-border transactions remain subject to multi-day settlement cycles and reliance on intermediary currencies for conversion. T+2 settlement introduces counterparty and settlement risk across the period between trade execution and final settlement - a structural inefficiency that atomic, real-time settlement would eliminate by completing both legs of a transaction simultaneously.
Project Pangea uses ISO 20022 standards and Swift infrastructure as the entry point for banks, allowing institutions to participate without replacing existing payment messaging systems. Instructions submitted through familiar banking infrastructure are translated into on-chain settlement actions through Chainlink CCIP.
The initiative establishes a scalable multi-currency settlement network beginning with EUR and KRW corridors, with the architecture designed to expand to additional currencies over time.
