Norway to build its CBDC on Ethereum

Norway's central bank has released the source code for its central bank digital currency (CBDC) sandbox based on Ethereum technology.

The sandbox is available on GitHub and allows testing basic token management use cases, including minting, burning, and transferring ERC-20 tokens, the Norges Bank's official CBDC partner Nahmii said in a blog post.

In addition to using the appropriate smart contracts and access control, the Norges Bank sandbox also includes custom frontend and network monitoring tools, like BlockScout and Grafana. According to Nahmii, the front end also shows a filterable summary of transactions on the network. Nahmii stressed that the current version of the code is only privately accessible by people with the necessary credentials. The official announcement about plans to conduct CBDC testing came from Norges Bank in April 2021, stating that it expected to find a preferred solution by trailing different designs for two years. In the working paper released on November 2021, the central bank mentioned possible CBDC designs, including those based on blockchains like Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Bitcoin SV.