BIS Launches Real-Value Testing for Project Agorá…

The Bank for International Settlements is moving Project Agorá into live, real-value transaction testing — a significant step for a blockchain-based cross-border payments initiative that counts the New York Fed, the ECB, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England among its central bank participants, alongside private-sector heavyweights JPMorgan, UBS, Visa, and Mastercard.

At the core of the project is a shared "unified ledger" designed to enable atomic settlement — simultaneous, instantaneous finality — between tokenized central bank reserves and commercial bank deposits. That architecture eliminates the correspondent-banking delays and counterparty risk that have plagued cross-border payments for decades.