The European Central Bank Has Selected COTI as a Pioneer Partner

The European Central Bank (ECB) has selected COTI among its partners for its central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative.

The selected partners are tasked with demonstrating the technical implementation of a conditional payments system before the CBDC’s launch.

COTI, an Ethereum confidentiality layer, is among nearly 70 market participants – including merchants, fintech companies, banks and other payment service providers – that have signed up to work with the ECB to explore digital euro payment functionalities and use cases.

The blockchain protocol is also one of 10 organizations handpicked by the ECB to serve as ‘Pioneers’ for its digital euro project. The selected partners have been tasked with demonstrating how a conditional payments system could be implemented on a technical level.

Announcing the partnership, Shahaf Bar-Geffen, co-founder and CEO of COTI, said:

“Being invited to work with the ECB on such a consequential project is humbling, and a testament to the expertise and hard work of the COTI team. Privacy is a vital component for the future of Web3, ensuring users’ security and organizations’ compliance, and the same benefits apply to CBDCs. It’s critical that confidentiality is built into the core of these new systems, not merely added as an afterthought.”

COTI is best known for its breakthrough cryptographic protocol, garbled circuits, which it builds into its Chainlink-like service, providing decentralized applications with off-chain data in a privacy-preserving manner.

The European digital euro project is the second CBDC that COTI has worked with, after the Bank of Israel’s Digital Shekel. In the Israeli project, COTI developed a proof-of-concept for trustless cross-border and cross-currency transactions using a decentralized marketplace powered by CBDCs and secured by garbled circuits for on-chain confidentiality.

However, by working as a pioneer under the ECB’s digital euro project, COTI will be exploring how to integrate the simulated digital euro interfaces with its platforms. The ECB is expected to provide participants with technical support and specifications, such as an application programming interface, to conduct independent work on use cases of their choice.

The Pioneers group is also expected to produce a report later in the year for review by the central bank.