XDC, the first Corda Network digital currency has been launched today by Cordite Society Ltd, a co-operative society registered in the UK, who have leveraged the existing UK legal structure for mutual societies to operate a digital currency, providing the first onshore legal structure for decentralized finance.
XDC, is an exchange token, released onto the Public Corda network, a publicly-available internet of Corda nodes operated by network participants. The token enables users to buy and sell goods within the public Corda network, such as settle securities, invoices, trade finance, and more. Each node represents a legal entity, identified by a trusted identity certificate. This ensures that XDC meets the G20 sanctioned FATF standards on digital assets to mitigate AML/CTF risks, a challenge that Ethereum-based DeFi projects continue to be unable to address.
“The roll-out of XDC demonstrates that the public Corda blockchain network is suitable for enterprise and financial institutions who want to enter the DeFi space, solving the technical and regulatory challenges faced by other technologies,” said Ben Wyeth, Director of the Cordite Society and lead developer of XDC.
XDC proves that the necessary decentralized finance (DeFi) legal structure is already available for financial institutions to come together around a common goal, such as a currency or distributed exchange, like a uniswap platform. By using the Corda public network within this decentralized legal structure, projects can not only comply with AML/CTF standards but ensure transactions are kept private between parties which is a requirement in most commercial and financial settings.
XDC is an institutional-grade, enterprise-ready, and regulatory friendly digital currency. It sets out to improve on the failures of early cryptocurrencies – fixed supply, inefficient media of exchange, high transaction fees, and virtually non-existent unit of account – built on the Public Corda Network and the benefits this affords; from privacy, security and performance. With U.S. Federal Regulators announcing that U.S. national banks can hold reserves for stablecoin issuers, the XDC case study demonstrates that the Public Corda Network is a suitable choice for banks and wider CBDC projects to build upon.
“XDC is an excellent case study that demonstrates Corda’s suitability for building stablecoins, especially in the US where they have opened up the opportunity for commercial banks to create stablecoins. We are now expecting others to use the Cordite codebase to create their own stables coins or CBDCs and accelerate the adoption of those currencies.” continued Wyeth.
BCB Prime Services will provide OTC liquidity and custody services for XDC for its corporate and institutional clients. BCB Prime Services offers efficient price discovery, best execution, and seamless daily settlement in all major world fiat currencies, and all major cryptocurrencies including XDC. BCB Prime Services was the first digital asset financial services group to join the public Corda network.
Oliver von Landsberg-Sadie, Founder and CEO, BCB Group, commented: “A globally scalable ‘currency’ use case of cryptocurrencies has been elusive in over a decade of innovation in this space. One of the barriers has been closer alignment with existing systems of money, regulations, and government, in a way that still preserves the decentralized ethos of the asset class. The XDC digital currency is one of a tiny handful of projects which meets all these complexity criteria and I’m excited to back this project from all angles.”
