To Test Digital Asset Transactions
The Bank of Korea announced on Jan. 24 that it would test digital asset transactions, offline settlement and cross-border remittance in the second phase of its CBDC research project that started in August last year and is scheduled to end in June this year.
In the first phase, the central bank set up a cloud test environment incorporating basic functions based on the distributed ledger technology. The bank completed the phase on Dec. 23 after confirming that the environment operates as intended.
The second phase started on Dec. 24 in order to check whether its CBDC can be used in digital asset transactions such as NFT transactions. This phase also covers offline settlement based on NFC or the like. “This research is to find whether the CBDC can be used as a backup when private payment and settlement services are unavailable due to, for example, a natural disaster or communication malfunction,” it explained.
The second phase also covers the possibility of application of new techniques and technologies, including enhanced personal information protection and expanded distributed ledger processing. In July and later, additional tests will be conducted in cooperation with financial institutions with nodes actually allocated to them for a more realistic simulation.