Barclays
CBDC Hackathon 2022

An exciting opportunity for market participants across the industry to code and showcase solutions that explore the future of money, including a digital pound.

Tuesday, 27 – Wednesday, 28 September
In-person event at Barclays Rise London
41 Luke St, London, EC2A 4DP.

Background

A Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is a new digital payment instrument, denominated in the national unit of account, that is a direct liability of the central bank. Central banks across the world are actively engaging in CBDC research including experiments, proofs-of-concept and pilots. Barclays is collaborating extensively with the industry on the developments in this field.

Central banks are researching both retail CBDCs for use by the general public and wholesale CBDCs for use by financial institutions. Retail CBDCs provide consumers with a new form of public money that supplements existing public money such as notes and coins. Central banks’ motivations for issuing retail CBDCs include providing access to central bank money in a digital world, increasing payments diversity, encouraging financial inclusion and facilitating fiscal transfers.

There is currently significant attention on CBDC design choices to ensure that risks of CBDC adoption are mitigated and opportunities are identified. One such risk is fragmentation in payments markets and retail deposits unless both existing and new forms of money are interoperable and have similar operational characteristics.

Challenge

Participants in the Barclays CBDC Hackathon 2022 will code solutions to a series of challenges that involve connecting to a Barclays simulation of both a central bank and commercial banks. This simulation will follow the Bank of England's platform model for retail UK CBDC provision, comprising a central bank operating a core ledger and providing access via application programming interfaces (APIs) to authorised and regulated Payment Interface Providers (PIPs) that provide users with access to CBDC. A panel of judges will assess the solutions and prizes will be awarded.

Participants will also have the opportunity to explore how industry ecosystems could be leveraged to solve these challenges across both existing and new forms of money, including both retail UK CBDC and commercial bank deposits.

Barclays is collaborating with Digital Asset, IBM, INDUSTRIA and EY for this event. Digital Asset will provide participants with access to and technical assistance on the DAML platform, IBM will provide participants with access to and technical assistance on the Hyperledger Fabric platform, INDUSTRIA will provide participants with technical assistance on the Corda platform, and EY will be an independent observer and will publish a report after the event.

© Barclays Bank PLC 2022.

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