The World Bank Group is functioning along with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) to issue a blockchain-based bond.
CBA, one of the four major retail banks in Australia, said on Friday in a statement that it has received a mandate from the World Bank to regulate the issue of the bond, which will be generated, transferred and administered via a blockchain platform.
The technology already developed by the CBA retail chain’s in-house laboratory is to enable key players in an issuance process, such as banks and investors to join the nodes of a distributed network. In this way, the capital for the bond can be increased and changed more efficiently.
The debt issuance named as bond-I expects contributions from investors such as QBE, Treasury Corporation of Victoria, and Northern Trust.
Arunma Oteh, treasurer of The World Bank, said in the statement that the technology was in a position to launch after a year of collaboration with the CBA. That said, the size and the timeline of bond remain unidentified at this phase.
According to the statement, the World Bank issues between $50 Billion and $60 Billion in bonds each year as part of its mandate to improve the sustainability and reduce poverty of global markets.
CBA, which designed and developed the technology, said it was a private block chain through the Ethereum network and had also evaluated Microsoft’s architecture, security, and platform resiliency.
The announcement follows the news that was published in December that CBA has developed a blockchain system for issuing securities in collaboration with a leading global issuer whose name has not been disclosed for the time.
Several key financial institutions around the world, such as the Agricultural Bank of China, BBVA, and JP Morgan, have already tested blockchain-based systems for loan and bonds issuance.