Today the European Blockchain Sandbox unveiled the first 20 participating projects. One of the groups is a consortium brought together by 2Tokens that includes Rabobank, ABN Amro and Assetblocks. The role of the banks is to provide euro denominated deposit tokens and host the wallets that hold the assets.
Law firm Bird & Bird is responsible for facilitating the regulatory sandbox and selected the projects based on criteria set by the European Commission. This European Blockchain Sandbox is entirely separate from the DLT Pilot Regime, which has a narrower application scope.
The tokenization will use Assetblocks’ solution to represent a tracking stock backed by renewable energy sources. Investors will buy NFTs representing a partial ownership interest in solar, wind and battery parks, which entitles them to receive profits. As a security, the NFT falls under MiFID II regulations.
Outside of the sandbox, Assetblocks is already up and running with its first trial “Energyblocks” representing an interest in a single energy installations based in Germany.
ABN Amro, Rabobank to provide deposit tokens
Rabobank and ABN Amro come into play for payment. To date Assetblocks settlement has used conventional money. Now the plan is to explore different settlement options, with one route being deposit tokens issued by the two Dutch banks using whitelisted wallets. Another is stablecoins such as Circle’s existing EUROC and Monerium’s EURe. Payments are needed for buying and selling the NFTs as well as dividends.
“By collaborating with ABN AMRO and Rabobank in this regulatory sandbox, the project aims to help create a common understanding of the true possibilities of tokenization in a fully compliant way,” said Meindert Jansberg, CEO Assetblocks. “Using this approach, we hope to pave the path for future tokenization and stablecoin related projects, unleashing the full potential of tokenization for society.”
The plan is also to explore other payment options, including unhosted wallets and crypto. In particular they want to trial a peer-to-peer smart contract escrow for settlement.
Meanwhile, ABN Amro helped a client issue a tokenized bond on a public blockchain earlier this year. And Rabobank has been using blockchain for commercial paper trials.
