The Central Bank of Lithuania announces digital collector coin hackaton

The bank is inviting tech-savy programmers, developers and expesrt within the digital industry not to miss the opportunity to suggest and test innovative technologies that might serve as a basis for creating a digital collector coin

The Bank of Lithuania is looking into the possibility of issuing a digital collector coin to commemorate the centenary of the restoration of Lithuania’s statehood. It would be designed using blockchain or other equivalent technology.
The aim of the hackathon is to develop a prototype of the coin. Participants will be asked to take into consideration the expectations of the Bank of Lithuania: the coin must be limited in number, unique, easily identifiable as the Bank of Lithuania’s digital collector coin, and linked to a physical coin; the participants must also guarantee a secondary market and fast transactions.

Special attention must be paid to security – the coin must be counterfeit-proof, while the platform for selling the coin has to be ready to handle heavy user traffic and be protected against cyberattacks. More information on the hackathon is available here.

The prototypes created during the hackathon and their descriptions will be assessed and evaluated by a selected panel of judges and experts. The top three selected projects will receive cash prizes. After the hackathon, the Bank of Lithuania will make a decision on further actions to be taken in terms of project implementation. Participants of the hackathon may be invited to take part in later project implementation stages. Those wishing to participate in the hackathon must fill out a registration form available here.

Registration to the hackathon will be open until 8 May 2018. The final decision regarding the participants will be made until 11 May 2018. The introductory session, where the representatives of the Bank of Lithuania will present the main idea behind the hackathon and answer all relevant questions, is to take place at Rise Vilnius (Gyneju g. 14, Vilnius) on 2 May 2018 (18:00). Registration is available here. The digital collector coin is expected to be issued already this year.

Commemorating important events, phenomena or prominent figures, numismatic items issued by the Bank of Lithuania are intended for collection only. Their use as legal tender is not encouraged. The issuance of the digital collector coin would be yet another step towards implementing one of the Bank of Lithuania’s strategic directions in the field of innovation and fintech.

At the start of the year the central bank announced its intention to create a blockchain sandbox platform, dubbed LBChain. It is aimed at helping Lithuanian and international companies gain knowledge and carry out blockchain-oriented research, thus adapting and testing blockchain-based services in the financial sector. The project is expected to be launched in 2019, accelerating the development of fintech businesses, which has been gathering pace in recent years, and reinforcing their eagerness to set up in Lithuania.