Fireblocks collaborates in Project Acacia to explore digital currencies for tokenised assets

Fireblocks, a provider of digital asset infrastructure, entered a collaboration with firms including NotCentralised, Redbelly Network, Australian Bond Exchange, and Fasanara Capital. This partnership aims to pilot atomic settlement of tokenised securities utilizing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), stablecoins, and deposit tokens.

Project Acacia, led by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), is investigating how digital forms of money can facilitate the development of wholesale tokenised asset markets in Australia. The project consists of two phases, with the first phase concluding in 2024, focusing on setting a conceptual design for potential settlement models.

The ongoing second phase includes the development and testing of prototypes for transaction settlements in tokenised assets driven by industry-led use cases. Fireblocks proposed a model to demonstrate how a wholesale Cross-Border Data Compact (CBDC) could mitigate counterparty risk via delivery-versus-payment settlement of tokenised securities.

This use case intends to illustrate seamless workflows for issuance and trading of tokenised securities on a permissioned public blockchain, combining central bank-issued digital money with stablecoins and deposit tokens. Initial proof-of-concept phases involved the use of test networks and simulated assets, with potential to advance to real-world transactions based on regulatory feedback.

Michael Shaulov, CEO of Fireblocks, stated, “Fireblocks is honoured to support the applied research effort of Project Acacia and contribute to exploring models for the future of settlement in tokenised asset markets.” Arturo Rodriguez, CEO of NotCentralised, described the project as pivotal for developing open capital markets using blockchain technology.

Redbelly Network's Chairman, Alan Burt, noted that CBDCs would form a foundational component of modern capital markets, while Fasanara Capital's CEO, Francesco Filia, emphasized the project's relevance to wholesale market infrastructure. Project Acacia is overseen by a steering committee representing key financial regulators, with a project report expected by the end of 2025.