Korean Survey: High Hopes for New Tech, Less for Blockchain and Metaverse

The Deutsche Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, has joined Project Guardian, a collaboration established in 2022 between the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and the financial sector, with an emphasis on the use of asset tokenization to improve liquidity and efficiency within financial markets.Photo by Rachel Davis on UnsplashAssessing DLT technologyIn a press release published on Nov. 8, Bundesbank Executive Board member Burkhard Balz suggested that the central bank is aligned with MAS in that both central banks are interested in determining “how innovative technologies and concepts, such as distributed ledger technology (DLT) or blockchain, can be put to meaningful use in the financial sector.” In joining Project Guardian, the Bundesbank will take part in the Asset & Wealth Management workstream, testing an interoperable blockchain platform for tokenized and digital funds. While the German central bank has just announced details of its participation in Project Guardian, in a speech given at the Layer One Summit, an event which formed part of the Singapore Fintech Festival last week, MAS Deputy Director Leong Sing Chiong welcomed the Bundesbank, alongside the World Bank, to Project Guardian.  The MAS executive clarified that the Deutsche Bundesbank and the World Bank would join the project’s Policymaker Group. He outlined that the role of that group is to “help provide inputs on governance arrangements, guidance on how GL1 [Global Layer One] infrastructures can be developed in line with global standards, and advice on appropriate regulatory guardrails for tokenised asset transactions.” GL1 refers to an initiative that has been established to create the foundational digital infrastructure to facilitate tokenized assets. Cross-border collaborationThrough its involvement in Project Guardian, the German central bank hopes to strengthen cross-border collaboration, while at the same time, progressing matters related to the “standardisation and interoperability of digital assets.” In working towards the goal of standardization, MAS has published two comprehensive reports covering fixed income tokenization and fund tokenization. MAS believes that the use of too many individual private DLT networks is resulting in fragmentation, with a detrimental effect with regard to liquidity. Consequently, the Singaporean central bank is establishing the Guardian Wholesale Network to improve liquidity and achieve asset tokenization at scale. The network will consist of Citi, Schroders, Standard Chartered, UOB and HSBC. Additionally, it was recently announced that SBI Digital Markets, a Singapore-based affiliate company of Japan’s SBI Digital Asset Holdings (SBI DAH), intends to contribute towards greater liquidity through its involvement in a fixed income asset tokenization pilot. Meanwhile, Citi and Fidelity have developed a proof of concept for a digital foreign exchange (FX) swap, enabled within an on-chain money market fund (MMF).  Tokenization inflection pointLeong went on to claim that while nobody has succeeded yet in implementing tokenization at scale, an inflection point has been reached with regard to the use of tokenization. He added that many use cases are promising relative to tokenization but that there is a need for supporting infrastructure “to enable good use cases to scale beyond individual networks.” In the press release, Leong said that the Bundesbank’s expertise “will be invaluable as we work together to enhance liquidity and efficiency of financial markets through asset tokenisation.”

Cake DeFi Co-Founder Launches Ordzaar Ordinals MarketplaceU-Zyn Chua, Singaporean Co-Founder and CTO of Singapore-based Cake DeFi, has launched Ordzaar, a Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace.In a social media post on Friday, the marketplace described itself as “a decentralized & trustless marketplace for #Bitcoin Ordinals, bridging the gap between trustlessness and true decentralization.” The Ordinals protocol has been enabled due to the SegWit and Taproot upgrades to the bitcoin protocol. It’s a system for numbering satoshis, the smallest denomination of the Bitcoin cryptocurrency. The protocol assigns each satoshi with a serial number, using that number to track them across transactions.By taking this approach, each individual satoshi becomes unique, allowing additional data to be attached to them in a process called inscription. The project has hit the ground running, with its website online and a step by step guide released, instructing new users in how to buy and sell Ordinals on the marketplace.Releasing a press release to publicize the launch, the project pointed out that “the lack of a fully decentralized Ordinals marketplace [poses] a major challenge”, given a backdrop in which Bitcoin Ordinal inscriptions have surged in popularity over the course of recent weeks. Elaborating on that point, the team stated: “There is a growing need for a reliable and secure platform that allows buyers and sellers to transact in a decentralized manner, giving them complete control over their assets, this is where Ordzaar comes in.”Asia Ordinals marketplace firstOrdzaar represents the first ever Bitcoin Ordinals marketplace based within the Asian region. Alongside U-Zyn Chua, the team behind the project implicates three other seasoned crypto-natives with a wealth of experience in crypto, bitcoin, and blockchain. Cake DeFi colleague Naqib Noor assumes the role of Co-Founder and Development Lead. As well as being Co-Founder, Chua is the project’s Lead Researcher.In an effort to showcase the brand new marketplace, the Ordzaar team sponsored and participated in the Bitcoin Ordinals 2023 conference in Miami late last week, with Chua appearing as a speaker at the event. The Co-Founder told Blockhead that:“Ordinals have proven that Bitcoin is more than just a peer-to-peer payment system and has demonstrated a new, high-value use case for the longest-running cryptocurrency. As the industry continues to build and innovate, Ordinals have the potential to unlock even more value on the Bitcoin blockchain, and will lift the entire crypto ecosystem as a whole.”NFTs took on a life all of their own with a market surge, tripling in value to $250 million in 2020. While that largely Ethereum-based market has cooled somewhat since then, it nonetheless continues to broaden and establish itself. Chua believes that Bitcoin-centric Ordinals can take a large slice of that development. “Along with the explosive adoption seen in the traditional ETH NFT market, we expect to see a similar trajectory in the Ordinals space,” he explained.In a tweet published on Saturday, Crypto journalist and investment team member at Seoul-based crypto venture capital firm #Hashed, Joseph Young, referred to changing dynamics within the NFT space, with relative newcomers Blur and Tensor taking on OpenSea and Magic Eden. Not short on confidence, the Ordinals team responded, stating: “And Ordzaar will be dominating decentralized Ordinals and BRC20 trading.” The overarching crypto space continues its progression at pace, and it will be intriguing to see how Ordinals, together with new marketplaces like Ordzaar, perform as the industry trundles forward.Photo by Dmitry Demidko on Unsplash

Gluwa, a San Francisco-based blockchain firm, has become a key partner in Nigeria’s central bank digital currency (CBDC) project, the eNaira, Korean media outlet Seoul Economic Daily reported.   Tapping into Nigeria’s 226M populationGluwa, the issuer of Creditcoin (CTC), announced yesterday that its Nigerian branch Gluwa Nigeria signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). Through the MOU, Gluwa Nigeria aims to facilitate the adoption of digital currency in Africa’s largest economy with a 226 million population, by connecting eNaira to Credal, the native API for Gluwa’s Creditcoin network. This integration is expected to enhance Nigeria’s financial ecosystem by recording loan and payment transactions on the Creditcoin network.Photo by Emmanuel Ikwuegbu on UnsplashMaking the financial system more inclusive and efficient The partnership is anticipated to boost financial inclusiveness among many Nigerians who are financially isolated due to their lack of access to traditional financial services. Moreover, the CBN expects that the adoption will improve the eNaira’s functionality and spur innovation in the country’s financial system. Among other objectives of the project is to create an efficient financial infrastructure in the country so that Western fintech firms can easily enter the Nigerian financial market.   Oh Tae-lim, CEO of Gluwa, said the company plans to lay out the project’s blueprint by the end of this year and eventually broaden the acceptance of the eNaira, taking the potential of the digital currency to a new level.  Meanwhile, Gluwa’s native token, CTC, is a real-world asset (RWA) network with a loan transaction volume of KRW 106.8 billion ($80 million) and a user base of 337,000.