Banco Central do Brasil has announced the 13 themes that will be trialed during the second phase of the DREX pilots. Santander, Visa, Mastercard and Google are amongst the participants in the 16 consortia, which involve over 50 companies.
DREX is a wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (wCBDC) system where the digital real is utilized for interbank settlements. On the retail side, the digital currency takes the form of tokenized deposits issued by commercial banks. The project aims to enable programmability and leverage blockchain and tokenization for financial activities like investments.
The first phase covered the essentials and involved just three assets: the wCBDC, tokenized deposits and digital treasury bonds. Processes such as issuance, transfers and settlement were tested.
During the second phase, various financial services will be developed via smart contracts on the DREX platform created by participant companies. The platform is a permissioned Ethereum network using Hyperledger Besu.
Development will start in a few weeks. However, given this is financial services, the regulators will discuss each use case, including the governance and privacy aspects. As previously reported, the central bank is not yet satisfied with the technical progress on the privacy front and delayed the project’s timeline to allow for further work. Originally the plan was to launch late this year or early next year. Currently, phase two is expected to last 12 to 14 months.
During the third quarter there will be an invitation for new participants. They will have to complete their smart contract tests by the end of June 2025, as previously announced.
The central bank is overseeing 11 of the themes, with the Securities Exchange Commission (CVM) supervising the ones relating to agribusiness assets and debentures.
The consortia are:
- ABBC: Banco Brasileiro de Crédito, Banco Ribeirão Preto, Banco Original, Banco ABC Brasil, Banco BS2 and Banco Seguro, ABBC, BBChain, Microsoft and BIP;
- ABC: Banco ABC, Hamsa, LoopiPay and Google;
- B3: Banco B3, B3 and B3 Digitas;
- BB: Banco do Brasil;
- Bradesco: Bradesco, Nuclea and Setl;
- BTG: Banco BTG;
- BV: Banco BV;
- Caixa: Caixa, Elo and Microsoft;
- Inter: Banco Inter, Microsoft and 7Comm;
- Itaú: Itaú Unibanco;
- MB: MBPay, Cerc, Sinqia, Mastercard and Banco Genial;
- Nubank: NuBank;
- Santander: Santander, Santander Asset Management, F1RST and Toro CTVM;
- SFCoop: Ailos, Cresol, Sicoob, Sicredi and Unicred;
- TecBan: Basa, TecBan, Pinbank, Dinamo, Cresol, Banco Arbi, Ntokens, Clear Sale, Foxbit, CPqD, AWS and Parfin;
- XP-Visa: XP and Visa.
Themes and the associated consortia:
- Assignment of receivables: ABC and Inter
- Credit collateralized in certificates of deposit: BB, Bradesco and Itaú
- Credit collateralized in public securities: ABBC, ABC and MB
- Financing of international trade operations (Trade Finance): Inter
- Optimization of the foreign exchange market: XP-Visa and NuBank
- Liquidity pool for trading public securities: ABC, Inter and MB
- Transactions with Bank Credit Notes: ABBC
- Transactions with agribusiness assets (CVM): TecBan, MB and XP-Visa
- Transactions with assets on public networks: MB
- Transactions with automobiles: B3, BV and Santander
- Credit transactions and decarbonization – CBIO: Santander
- Transactions with debentures (CVM): B3, BTG and Santander
- Real estate transactions: BB, Caixa and SFCoop.
