The fintech unit of South Africa Reserve Bank has announced its successful results in Blockchain payment trials for interbank and clearance settlement.

On Tuesday, 5th June, 2018, South Africa Reserve Bank (SARB) released a statement, has completed a 14- week “realistic” proof-of-concept. It managed to resolve the country’s 70,000 daily payment transactions within 2 hours. Therefore, it takes an average of 1-2 seconds for each transaction.

The “Project Khokha”, announced on Tuesday by SARB that successfully trailed interbank settlements using blockchain based DLT (Distributed Ledger Technology). On note, the project was built on Quorum, an Ethereum-based private blockchain. Moreover, it is only project in which PoC has used Pedersen commitments and range proofs on a Quorum network using IBFT (Istanbul Byzantine Fault Tolerance).

Further, the SARB’s reports, the pilot saw participation from members of a consortium of banks. It includes FirstRand, Capitec, Investec, Absa, Discovery Bank, Standard Bank and NedBank.

The technical lead of enterprise delivery at New York ConsenSys, a blockchain software technology firm and the Bank’s technology partner, Peter Munnings, said

“The Bank had “pushed the envelope in a number of ways” on the project. There are many issues to consider before the decision to take a DLT-based system into production can be taken. Some of these issues relate to the practicalities of implementation. But also to legal and regulatory factors, and to the broader economic impact”.

Moreover, the project Khokha was to better understand how the South African Multiple Option Settlement (SAMOS) system would go well with DLT blockchain based system. It also helps to explore different types of collaborative innovation that has become more common. Therefore, there is no intention to change the approach with SAMOS but only to input to that Project Khokha.

SARB Explained;

“If one starts from the point where money is tokenized…and then represented on a DLT system. However then this system can be developed to enable other uses beyond wholesale settlement. Examples include the exchange of tokenized money for other tokenized assets, like bonds or securities”.

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