Hong Kong, July 21, 2021 — Today Consensys is proud to announce it will be the lead technical partner for GroundX’s winning bid for the Bank of Korea Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot project.
GroundX, a blockchain affiliate of the nation’s tech giant Kakao Corp., developed Klaytn, a public blockchain with Ethereum compatibility and partnered with Consensys, market-leading blockchain technology company, in April this year to begin work on the Central Bank of Korea CBDC architecture. South Korea’s central bank on Tuesday named GroundX as the preferred bidder for the partner position on its pilot digital currency development program.
Korea’s CBDC experiment will be divided into two phases, and is expected to last for 10 months. The first simulation stage will run from August to December of 2021, trialing basic functionality such as creating, issuance and redemption of the digital won as well as secret keys and wallet functionality. In early 2022, a second phase aims to explore more advanced features such as cross border payments, offline payment, and integration with digital asset systems. This latter phase will also involve programmable money and privacy-enhancing technologies.
Charles d’Haussy, APAC Managing Director at Consensys said, “Consensys is excited to bring its unique expertise on central bank digital currencies to the Bank of Korea pilot program. Consensys will work closely with GroundX and the Bank of Korea on topics such as Rollup scalability, Zero Knowledge Proof privacy solution and streamlined reconciliation.”
Jason Han, the CEO of GroundX said, “We are excited to be participating in the Bank of Korea’s CBDC distribution pilot. Together with Consensys, we will work to leverage Klaytn’s blockchain technology and Consensys’ solutions to advancing spearhead South Korea’s CBDC infrastructure.”
Consensys is a leader in the quickly growing central bank digital currency research and implementation space, winning projects with the Reserve Bank of Australia, France’s Societe Generale, the Bank of Thailand, and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Our scalability rollup solutions and zero-knowledge proof frameworks for central banks, banks, payment service providers, and corporations guarantee that digital assets and transactions remain secure, transparent, highly available, auditable, and efficient. Our solutions leverage Consensys Quorum's public-private blockchain interoperability to ensure high interoperability for confidential wholesale transfers and scalable retail transactions. We will also rely on Consensys Codefi’s Payments platform, powered by AWS. It allows digital currency issuers to design and build digital currency settlement infrastructure, and for service providers to use the digital currency and build overlay services.
About Consensys:
Consensys is the leading Ethereum software company. We enable developers, enterprises, and people worldwide to build next-generation applications, launch modern financial infrastructure, and access the decentralized web. Our product suite, composed of Infura, Quorum, Codefi, MetaMask, Truffle and Diligence, serves millions of users, supports billions of blockchain-based queries for our clients, and has handled billions of dollars in digital assets. Ethereum is the largest programmable blockchain in the world, leading in business adoption, developer community, and DeFi activity. On this trusted, open source foundation, we are building the digital economy of tomorrow. To explore our products and solutions, visit https://consensys.io.
About Ground X:
Ground X is the blockchain affiliate of the leading South Korean Internet company, Kakao. With a mission to trigger the mass adoption of blockchain experience for millions of users, Ground X is developing a public blockchain platform, Klaytn. Ground X invites businesses to not only offer cutting-edge blockchain-based services through Klaytn but also collectively operate the platform. Ground X is committed to making blockchain technology easy to reach and use, paving the road for a wider audience to appreciate its value. In doing so, Ground X also focuses on leveraging blockchain to drive social impact and creating a stable blockchain ecosystem.