Australia saw the successful completion of its first foreign exchange transaction using a central bank digital currency (CBDC) , the eAUD, this week. The crypto fund managers, DigitalX and TAF Capital, exchanged eAUD for a USD stablecoin, USDC, on Canvas’ Ethereum layer 2 blockchain.
The transaction was completed on Canvas Connect which is a privacy focused layer 2 blockchain. That layer 2 leverages StarkWare’s zero-knowledge roll-up technology allowing near instant settlement without compromising important factors such as privacy, compliance with regulation and scalability. The tokenized FX settlement was part of Australia’s CBDC pilot between the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC).
Canvas sells the great potential of layer 2 solutions to eliminate “market inefficiencies, errors, and settlement risks”, compared to existing foreign exchange and remittance networks which were traditionally “slow, expensive and prone to errors”.
The CEO of Canvas, David Lavecky praised the successful transaction as ‘historic’ and further said:
The eAUD, as a CBDC, holds the potential to address crucial challenges in both FX and International Remittance Markets such as improving transaction times, reducing fees, and providing more open access…We believe that CBDCs…will radically transform finance and markets.
In addition to testing CBDC use cases, the pilot has provided a platform for a variety of real world use cases for blockchain and digital assets. Canvas’ FX settlement project is only one of Australia’s 15 selected use cases in the RBA’s CBDC pilot. Other use cases to be tested include carbon trading, tokenised invoicing, tax automation and applications in ‘trusted Web3 commerce’. An assessment report on the pilot use cases is expected to be released by the end of next month.
