BIS Project Agorá prototype enforces jurisdictional reserve custody through dual-ledger design

The Bank for International Settlements has released the prototype report for Project Agorá, a wholesale cross-border payment system involving seven central banks and over forty financial institutions. The architecture separates tokenised commercial bank deposits on a shared unifying ledger from tokenised central bank reserves, which remain on independent jurisdictional ledgers operated by each monetary authority. A payment coordinator contract on the unifying ledger orchestrates settlement without direct control over reserve ledgers, preserving local supervisory authority. The next phase will test real value transfers, though the project remains experimental with no production timeline.

The design targets speed, efficiency, transparency, and settlement risk through atomic updates and parallel compliance checks. Participants include JPMorgan, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Swift, Mastercard, and UBS, with the Bank of Canada now joining. The seven central banks (Banque de France for the Eurosystem, Bank of Japan, Bank of Korea, Bank of Mexico, Swiss National Bank, Bank of England, and Federal Reserve Bank of New York) represent the major reserve currencies. The qualitative assessment found the prototype materially or partially addressed all nine priority friction points identified in the scoping phase.

The two-layer structure contrasts with shared-ledger models: central bank money never migrates to a multi-jurisdictional substrate. Each reserve ledger executes settlement under domestic legal and operational oversight, while the unifying ledger coordinates payment logic across commercial participants. This partitioning reflects central bank reluctance to cede custody or governance of sovereign liabilities to a common infrastructure.