The central banks from the two powerful economies in the Middle East released a report on a yearlong joint central bank digital currency (CBDC) project and spoke of blockchain technology.
It has been reported that Project Aber was a joint effort between the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to establish a “proof of concept” designed to “contribute in the body of knowledge in CBDC and DLT technologies.”
However, the combined effort of two central banks in such a study is among the first of its kind.
The report notes that the choice of name in “Aber” spoke to the core mission of the project:
“The name Aber was selected because, as the Arabic word, for “crossing boundaries”, it both captures the cross-border nature of the project as well as our hope that it would also cross boundaries in terms of the use of the technology.”
Likewise, the report notes that the project used a digital currency backed with real money in order to force “greater consideration” of issues surrounding security and existing payment systems, broken into three distinct phases that progressively expanded the scope of the trial to six different commercial banks.
A working CBDC on the horizon? According to a report issued today, "Project Aber," the latest central bank digital currency study out of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, is possibly the most promising yet https://t.co/5Ea1keDxUL — Cointelegraph (@Cointelegraph) November 29, 2020
The report further stated that a dual-issued CBDC was “not only technically viable” for cross border payments, but that CBDCs present “a significant improvement over centralized payment systems in terms of architectural resilience.”
The Project Aber commented:
“The key requirements […] were all met, including complex requirements around privacy and decentralization, as well as requirements related to mitigating economics risks, such as central bank visibility of money supply and traceability of issued currency.”
Thus, the report recommends a number of next steps for research and policy, including adopting DLT to improve the security of existing systems, “offering a DLT-based payments rails,” and expanding the scope of future Project Aber trials to include more geographically dispersed partners as well as the settlement of other assets, such as bonds.
Source: Cointelegraph
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