Last week the European Central Bank (ECB) published the results of its first digital euro prototypes and a paper surveying suppliers of central bank digital currency (CBDC) technology. The first paper questioned whether technology would be available to support an offline digital euro within five to seven years at the levels it demands. It also shared details about the prototype N€XT backend system developed in-house by the ECB, which encountered some challenges.
In September last year, the central bank announced that it selected five organizations to carry out front end prototypes for different scenarios. For example, Amazon developed the user interface (UI) for e-commerce payments and Worldline for peer-to-peer offline payments. Subsequently, the ECB shared its high level design work for its prototype backend settlement engine. And it revealed more in the latest paper.
The prototypes are intended purely for learning rather than representing final choices. The paper mentions they will be discarded.
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