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- The ongoing speculations of Ripple or XRP being directly involved with the BIS’ Project Mariana have been proven false.
- According to reports, Ripple is a member of the BIS cross-border payments interoperability and extension task force, but the Mariana Project largely relies on Ethereum and Curve Finance.
Bank of International Settlements (BIS) was recently in the news for facilitating collaboration between Switzerland, Singapore, and Eurosystem Centres in conjunction with the Bank of France, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the Swiss National Bank to introduce its first innovation hub cross-border project called Project Mariana.
The project envisions the wholesale issuance of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) by various Central Banks while looking at options for tokenized FX trading and settlement. On top of this, it builds on the wCBDC experiments to analyze concepts that came up in Decentralized Finance applications. Interestingly, it was wildly bruited across various crypto-related forums that Ripple and XRP were potentially involved in the project.
The speculation was triggered by the recent report that Ripple is a member of the BIS cross-border payments interoperability and extension (PIE) task force. The document was published on August 9. As a member of the task force, Ripple would work hand in hand with SWIFT and Mastercard to achieve the BIS’ objective of advancing the interoperability of cross-border payments.
BIS stated:
Engagement and partnership between the public and private sectors is a key element of the G20 cross-border payments program. Improvements to payment systems and arrangements underlying cross-border payments require global coordination, cooperation, and the commitment of a wide range of public authorities and private sector stakeholders.
More on Ripple or XRP’s and BIS Rumors
According to reports, the PIE task force is very crucial in the G20 cross-border payments initiative. They enforce the decision to achieve a higher standard of efficiency, security, and transparency in cross-border transactions worldwide.
Ripple’s inclusion was popularized by the CEO of Alpha Lions Academy, Edward Farina. Unfortunately, his post was misconstrued by a few who ended up spreading it across other forums. Further reports disclose that rumors stemmed from a report published by the Atlanta Federal Reserve. This report was titled “An Introduction to Web3 with Implications for Financial Services.” Within the context, Ripple’s potential to enforce seamless cross-border payments was highlighted. To be clear, the report did not state emphatically that Project Mariana would use Ripple or XRP.
Researchers, in an attempt to examine the claims, analyzed the project’s interim report. From this exercise, it was confirmed that Ripple or XRP has no core involvement in the project. The project is largely backed by Ethereum and Curve Finance.
According to the report, Mariana Project largely depends on the distributed ledger technology (DLT) of Ethereum in its creation and transfer of wCBDC tokens. One interesting observation is that the token is perfectly in line with the ERC-20 standard. In addition, it facilitates interoperability across different blockchains by using bridging mechanisms. This set it up to connect Ethereum with Arbitrum.
Curve Finance, on the other hand, operates as the Automated Market Maker (AMM) solution to enable frictionless exchange of wCBDCs. This means Ripple or XRP has no central role in the project contrary to the speculations out there.
Ripple’s XRP has been struggling lately as bears take over the market to send the price to $0.5175, a 17 percent fall in the last seven days.
