The central bank of Norway, Norges Bank, is reportedly working on central bank digital currency (CBDC) on Ethereum infrastructure. Still in prototype stages, the CBDC is currently being tested the so-called sandbox mode, which allows developers to test out the digital currency in an isolated environment.
Key takeaways:
- Norges Bank’s CBDC project is being developed in collaboration with Ethereum scaling solution Nahmii. The company published the code for the nation’s digital currency in a GitHub repository last week.
- In the project’s current iteration, Norges Bank and Nahmii are testing out “basic token management use cases”, consisting of token minting, burning, and ERC-20 token transfers.
- According to Nahmii’s blog post, the sandbox has been written in React, a flexible frontend javascript library, largely responsible for developing the view layer of web-based and native mobile apps.
- As of right now, the project’s code does not support third-party wallet integrations, such as MetaMask. In addition, all transactions on the testnet are private.
- According to data collected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), nearly 100 countries around the globe are developing their own versions of blockchain-basked fiat currencies.
- China, one of the frontrunners in the space, has been working on a digital yuan since 2014, and its currency has already seen limited use in real-life scenarios, such as at this year’s Winter Olympics. India is also fast-tracking its CBDC development and aims to start issuing digital rupees as soon as by the end of 2022. The US and the US have also raised their CBDC efforts, aiming for pilot programs in 2023.
