The project was built in partnership with banking consortium R3 and other banks including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, JPMorgan and Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, and aims to connect the world’s central banks via distributed ledger technology. Its first phase was concluded December 23, 2016, and was formally announced on March 9, 2017.
The initial phase revealed how the system for the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s high-value and urgent transfers, called MEPS+, can be linked to the real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) to increase money transfer efficiency between different participant’s online wallets.
Phase two of the project is now underway and it focuses on improving how transactions are settled compared to the current system, where they are queued and periodically netted using “classical algorithms”, according to a representative of the Monetary Authority.
The process, called “gridlock resolution”, requires that a single central party has an overarching view of all the transactions to find the net sum. Step one of Project Ubin involves a closer look at the mechanics of smart contracts, while step two is working to identify how the platform can be integrated with various central securities depositories, including Singapores own SGX, which is overseen by the Monetary Authority.
If that is successful, step three would eventually extend the digital bank issued cryptocurrencies even further to other central banks, according to CoinDesk. Furthermore, consultation paper on the matter is also forthcoming, designed to make clear the trajectory of the project.
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