The Mariana Project, an initiative whose objective was to explore the application of central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to improve the efficiency and security of cross-border payments, was successfully concluded, the Bank of France reported. confirmed.
Even as this pilot comes to an end, a developer grades that the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) reportedly used the ethereum Sepolia public testnet and Curve Finance smart contracts as the basis of Project Mariana, testing and measuring the effectiveness of the automated market maker (AMM) pilot cross-border Forex.
The CBDC project depended on Curve Finance code. Still, the BIS wanted to keep use of the Curve framework private. So far, there has been no comment from Curve Finance or any core ethereum developers regarding the use of Project Mariana’s decentralized finance (DeFi) code or architecture.
However, looking at Curve Finance’s experience in enabling the movement and exchange of stablecoins, their experience could have been valuable. DeFi Call data as of September 28 sample that Curve Finance had more than $2.1 billion in total value locked (TVL).
Curve Finance is a decentralized exchange (DEX) for trading tokenized fiat, stablecoins, privately issued by entities such as Circle or Tether Holdings. The protocol relies on an automated market maker (AMM) model to attract liquidity and ensure price discovery with low slippage.
Project Mariana, a platform of the BIS and multiple central banks such as the Bank of France and the Swiss National Bank, used the same architecture for the same objectives as Curve Finance: accessing liquidity and achieving price discovery.
It is unclear which versions of Vyper were used to code the smart contracts in this pilot. However, it is worth noting that Curve Finance experienced an attack in late July, resulting in a loss of over $60 million. This happened due to a vulnerability in previous versions of Vyper that was exploited via a reentry attack.
Anti-CBDC bill supported by Republicans in the United States
While the BIS says central banks should first create a CBDC framework, the anti-CBDC bill, or the State CBDC Anti-Surveillance Law, introduced by pro-cryptocurrency congressman Tom Emmer in February 2023, was recently considered by the House Financial Services Committee on September 20, 2023. The bill must still be voted on by the full House of Representatives.
If adopted, the law will prevent the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, from issuing a digital version of the dollar. The bill has broad support from Republicans and opposition from Democrats. Supporters are concerned about abuse, saying CBDCs give “more power to governments and infringe on privacy rights.”
Featured image from Canva, TradingView chart
