Project Mariana

Project Mariana is a research project by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub, the Bank of France, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the Swiss National Bank. It aims to explore the use of automated market makers (AMMs) for the cross-border trading and settlement of wholesale central bank digital currencies (wCBDCs).

Automated market makers (AMMs)

AMMs are decentralized protocols that use smart contracts to facilitate the trading of assets without the need for a central intermediary. They work by creating pools of liquidity, which are used to automatically match buy and sell orders.

Project Mariana uses a public blockchain to implement its AMM. The blockchain provides a secure and tamper-proof environment for the trading and settlement of wCBDCs.

The project’s proof of concept demonstrated the technical feasibility of using AMMs for cross-border wCBDC trading and settlement. It also showed that AMMs can be used to create new financial market infrastructures that are more efficient and inclusive than traditional ones.

Project Mariana is still under development, but it has the potential to revolutionize the way that cross-border payments are conducted. By using AMMs to trade and settle wCBDCs, central banks could make cross-border payments faster, cheaper, and more accessible for everyone.

Advantages

• Reduced costs: AMMs can help to reduce the costs of cross-border payments by eliminating the need for intermediaries.
• Increased speed: AMMs can help to speed up cross-border payments by settling transactions in real time.
• Increased access: AMMs can help to make cross-border payments more accessible to everyone, including individuals and small businesses.
• Increased transparency: AMMs can help to increase the transparency of cross-border payments by making all transactions visible on the blockchain.

Overall, Project Mariana is a promising research project that has the potential to make cross-border payments more efficient, inclusive, and transparent.