The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) announced the creation of the Project Ensemble Architecture Community (the Community), a collaborative initiative to shape standards and provide suggestions to support the development of Hong Kong’s tokenisation market.

The Community aims to develop industry standards to support interoperability among wholesale Central Bank Digital Currency (wCBDC), tokenised money, and tokenised assets. It will initially focus on establishing a mechanism to support seamless interbank settlement of tokenised deposits through wCBDC for tokenised asset transactions.

Additionally, the Community will assist in designing and implementing the Project Ensemble Sandbox, which is targeted to launch by mid-2024. This will facilitate further research and testing of tokenisation use cases.

The Community comprises various industry representatives across multiple domains, including regulators, international organisations, academia, local and multinational banks, key players in the digital asset industry, and technology companies. 

Initial members of Project Ensemble Architecture Community include the HKMA, the Securities and Futures Commission, the BIS Innovation Hub Hong Kong Centre, the CBDC Expert Group, and seven private sector members: Bank of China (Hong Kong), Hang Seng Bank, HSBC, Standard Chartered Hong Kong, HashKey Group, Ant Digital Technologies, and Microsoft Hong Kong.

The formation of the Community is based on careful consideration of the members’ expertise in contributing to the development of the tokenisation market in Hong Kong, their experience and competency in relevant fields, and their innovative capability. 

The HKMA will work closely with the industry and review the size and composition of the Community as deemed appropriate.

Featured image credit: Edited from Freepik