Deep Dives
Longer guides built on named primary sources: central bank experiments, standards briefings, policy reports and academic papers. Each one explains what the source found, what it did not test and how it connects to the technology.
Project Khokha: South Africa's Tokenised Rand
A plain-language walkthrough of the South African Reserve Bank's 2018 proof of concept for settling interbank payments…
Central bank digital currency · 4 min readThe Digital Shekel: Weighing a Central Bank Currency
How the Bank of Israel framed the case for a digital shekel in 2021: six possible motivations, the design model on the…
Public policy · 4 min readUK Report on Distributed Ledgers, Explained
A summary of the UK Government Office for Science report on distributed ledger technology: its eight recommendations…
Crypto fundamentals · 3 min read7 Questions to Ask of Any Crypto Project
How the World Economic Forum sorted cryptocurrency use cases into four layers, plus the profile questions you can ask…
Trade and supply chains · 3 min readTradeTech: AI, Blockchain and IoT in Trade
What the World Economic Forum and WTO secretariat say about using AI, distributed ledgers and the Internet of Things in…
Digital identity · 3 min readKnown Traveller Digital Identity Explained
How the Known Traveller Digital Identity concept lets travellers share verified facts selectively, and how it differs…
Law and development · 4 min readBlockchain in Africa: Opportunities and Law
A guide to a 2019 academic paper on blockchain for African development, covering land registries, e-government, finance…
Defence and security · 3 min readDoes NATO Need a Blockchain? A Sober Test
Researchers from NATO's communications agency ask when a blockchain actually helps a military alliance, and propose one…
Consensus and networks · 3 min readStellar Consensus Protocol Explained
An accessible explanation of federated Byzantine agreement and quorum slices, the idea behind the Stellar Consensus…
Quantum and policy · 3 min readQuantum Computing Governance Principles
A guide to the World Economic Forum's quantum computing governance principles: the seven shared values, nine themes and…
Regulation and markets · 3 min readSouth African Fintech and Crypto Rules
Two reports on South African fintech, a 2018 legal overview and a 2019 landscape study for regulators, compared for…
Banking and crypto · 3 min readWhat Banks Need to Offer Crypto Services
A summary of a 2022 Oliver Wyman paper, commissioned by Ripple, on customer demand for crypto through banks and the…
Consensus and networks · 6 min readRipple Consensus Paper Explained (2014)
A plain-language walkthrough of the 2014 Ripple consensus paper: trusted node lists, the 80% rule, fork prevention and…
Digital identity · 3 min readDigi-ID Passwordless Login Explained
What the DigiByte Foundation says its Digi-ID protocol does, how wallet-based sign-in generally works, and the…
Cyber security · 5 min readWEF Cyber Resilience Leadership Principles
The five cyber-resilience leadership principles in the World Economic Forum’s May 2020 paper, explained in plain…
Central bank projects · 3 min readProject Dunbar: A Shared Multi-CBDC Platform
What Project Dunbar tested: one shared platform for several central bank digital currencies, two prototypes, and two…
Central bank projects · 4 min readBIS Innovation Hub Projects Compared
A sourced comparison of seven BIS Innovation Hub projects, from Dunbar to Agorá, with partners, dates and status as the…
Bank projects · 3 min readHSBC Orion, Tokenised Deposits and Gold
A sourced guide to HSBC Orion, the Tokenised Deposit Service, the HSBC Gold Token and a quantum-safe gold pilot, with…
Standards · 3 min readISO 20022 and Crypto: What Compliant Means
ISO 20022 is a messaging standard for financial institutions. Here is what it is, who has to use it, and why there is…
Consensus and networks · 3 min readRipple vs Stellar vs Hedera Consensus
Trusted lists, quorum slices and hashgraph virtual voting side by side, using each project’s own paper or page, with…
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