Central Bank of Norway taps into Ethereum’s infrastructure to develop its CBDC

• The Norges Bank recently made its CBDC Sandbox code public after previously hinting at its intention of leveraging Ethereum.
• Nahmii AS, the crypto company, working with the Norges Bank, is expected to deliver the second part of the project before the end of September.
• CBDCs are rapidly developing, with over 87 countries currently engaged in either Research and Development or running Pilot programs.

For many governments, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) have become the solution to either dealing with cryptos entirely or furthering their footing in the space vis-a-vis blockchain technology. Norway, falling in the latter category, is building its digital currency with influence from the second biggest cryptocurrency network in the world.

Norway, Ethereum and CBDC

Earlier this week, Nahmii AS, a Layer-2 scaling protocol for Ethereum, announced that the source code for the CBDC sandbox, being developed for the Central Bank of Norway, has been made available to the public. 

Building on Norges Bank’s earlier intimation of Ethereum being the core technology on which the country’s CBDC is based, the new source code highlighted the current operations that can be conducted on the test network.

The sandbox environment currently allows for testing the basic token management use cases, which include minting, burning and transferring ERC-20 tokens.

Talking about the future, Nahmii AS blog read,

“Further sandbox development includes more complex and interesting use cases, such as batch payments, security tokens and bridges. This involves custom smart contract work, alongside additional frontend development.”

The L2 stated that the second part of the project is expected to be delivered to the Central Bank by mid-September, i.e., a few days.

CBDCs around the world

While Norway is still in the earlier stages of the development of CBDCs, many other countries are already way ahead in the process, motivating others to keep up with them. 

According to the Atlantic Council, at the moment, over 87 countries are either in the process of researching and developing their CBDCs or have already launched their pilot programs.

CBDC development stages around the world

Apart from China, another 11 countries, including the likes of Jamaica and Nigeria, have already launched their CBDCs on a full scale. 

Thus, this sector's rapid development is bound to hold center stage in the coming years.

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