Finance chiefs in the Marshall Islands – soon to be the destination for the world’s first national digital token – have announced the volcanic atoll will be teaming up with Algorand and SFB Technologies to deliver the island chain’s pioneering cryptocurrency.

The Marshallese sovereign (SOV) will initially sit alongside the US dollar for the 52,000 inhabitants before gradually becoming its prime currency.

Known for its development of scalable blockchain-native solutions for real-world use cases, Algorand is the creator of an open-source, pure proof-of-stake blockchain protocol.

“Algorand was selected after extensive market research among the leading protocol options,” said Jim Wagner, co-founder and CTO of SFB Technologies.

“The company has already powered several mainstream use cases and thanks to its unique features the platform has the functionality required to issue, manage and distribute the SOV on a global level.

“This partnership ensures that the SOV will be built on a scalable and secure platform.”

The government of the Marshall Islands will oversee the SOV and leverage the combination of Algorand’s blockchain functionality and SFB Technologies’ identity management and compliance platform.

Harnessing benefits

“The Marshall Island’s vision for global participation and inclusion in an open financial system by harnessing the benefits of blockchain technology is aligned with a truly global and decentralised society that we believe is made possible with our technology,” said Silvio Micali, founder of Algorand.

“We are proud to support the country on its groundbreaking journey towards mainstream digital currency adoption.”

The SOV supply will be algorithmically fixed to grow at 4% each year to prevent runaway inflation. The SOV will be introduced through a token pre-sale: rights to future SOV will be sold in a series of auctions as part of a time-release monetary issuance (TRMI), which is expected to begin this year.

Kenneth Kedi, Speaker of the Marshallese Parliament, said the partnership marked a huge step forward in expanding the remote republic’s economy.

“I am excited about the technological partnership with Algorand – with it, a strong alliance is forming to develop the SOV project,” he said.

“This is another milestone towards developing the Marshall Islands financial services industry.”