The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) says Project Aurum Phase 2 is an early-stage test built on its earlier Aurum code. The BIS Innovation Hub developed it with the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and other institutions. It combines several privacy tools like encryption and zero-knowledge proofs, which let a payment be verified without revealing the names tied to the transaction or the amount.

BIS considers ZK proofs for privacy

Under the design, people would still sign up through their regular banks. Those banks will verify their identity and keep their records, without the central bank having access to any of that information. Personal details will only be provided if the law demands it. This is a notable shift in tone from 2020, when BIS general manager Agustín Carstens said a central bank digital currency (CBDC) would give the issuer “absolute control on the rules and regulations” governing its use.

He remarked on an IMF panel, and conspiracy theorists later seized on it. In August 2026, a European Central Bank board member, Piero Cipollone, said the planned digital euro would deliver the maximum level of privacy of any current technology, insisting the Eurosystem could not structurally link people to their transactions.

Civil society groups, including an Austrian digital rights organization called Epicenter.works, wrote a joint statement, warning that legislative promises regarding the digital euro can be reinterpreted or broken. A research paper by Jeff Nijsse and Andrea Pinto looked at 20 CBDC projects and found that privacy features promised in early proposals usually get watered down by launch.

However, Project Aurum is yet to be released or used commercially. The BIS report also admits that stronger privacy can make transactions slower, make programmable features harder to build, and make lost wallets difficult to recover.

The post BIS considers ZK proofs for CBDC privacy in Project Aurum first appeared on Coinfea.

The Bank of England used the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) London innovation center to run “Project Meridian” to construct a prototype that might speed up and decrease transaction costs in Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) systems used by central banks.

With this project, the Bank of England attempted to solve the problems with the RTGS systems that central banks are currently using, such as their poor transaction rates and expensive costs. The prototype created as part of “Project Meridian” may lessen these problems, enabling transactions to be completed more quickly and for less money.

The Meridian project is only one of the numerous that BIS employs to carry out its ongoing research and development initiatives in the cryptocurrency and fintech sectors, ranging from decentralized finance (DeFi) to central banking digital currency (CBDC) systems.

The RTGS system of the central bank was connected with other financial market infrastructures and ledgers using DLT, according to a statement made by the BIS, which speaks for all central banks globally. The technology automatically coordinated the transfer of money and ownership of assets safely and reliably.

DLT, or distributed ledger technology, is a cutting-edge technology that has gained interest in the cryptocurrency and banking industries. It functions as a reliable mechanism for keeping track of transactions. The potential of DLT to improve and disrupt the bitcoin and banking sectors has drawn significant attention from traditional finance. It can enhance interbank transfers and speed up the creation of digital sovereign currencies.

A senior Bank of England staff member advised legislators in February that using distributed ledger technology (DLT) to create a central bank digital currency (CBDC) would be too laborious. Along the road, the project ran across various difficulties.

The post Using DLT for interbank transactions, “Project Meridian” at the Bank of England has been a resounding success first appeared on Coinfea.