The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the country’s central bank and financial regulator, has released a new report detailing Project Ubin, an initiative triggered last year aimed at developing a tokenized form of the Singapore dollar (SGD) on a distributed ledger.
Project Ubin began in November 2016 when MAS announced a partnership with R3 to develop a proof-of-concept to conduct inter-bank payments facilitated by blockchain technology.
MAS said that the purpose here was to better understand blockchain and its potential benefits through practical experimentation. It noted that “digital central bank issued tokens” could enable the development of simpler to use and more efficient alternatives to today’s systems.
In Phase 1 of Project Ubin, which ran between November and December 2016, the project leveraged on MAS’s New MAS Electronic Payment System (MEPS+), a Real-Time Gross Settlement system (RTGS), to issue funds on a distributed ledger.
An Ethereum-based blockchain was designed to interface with the existing MEPS+ RTGS system, which allowed for a working integrated transfer prototype. The prototype was tested for the ability to transact 24/7, resilience against single points of failure, and timeliness of settlements.
The successful completion of Phase 1 was announced in March 2017.