Australian financial authorities have moved forward with Project Acacia, unveiling the private-sector participants and next steps in an initiative aimed at exploring the use of digital money and tokenised assets in wholesale financial markets.
The project, jointly led by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), is part of a broader national strategy to develop a digital asset ecosystem.
Project Acacia, which began with a consultation paper in November 2024, has now reached a key milestone.
A total of 24 use cases from a diverse set of organisations have been conditionally selected for the next stage. These include major financial institutions, fintech firms, and digital asset specialists.
Nineteen of the selected use cases will involve pilot tests using real money and asset transactions, while the remaining five will be conducted as proof-of-concept demonstrations using simulated environments.
The tests will span a variety of asset classes, such as fixed income products, private markets, trade receivables, and carbon credits.
Participants will trial multiple settlement mechanisms, including stablecoins, bank-issued deposit tokens, and a pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC).
The CBDC will be issued on several distributed ledger technology platforms, both private and public-permissioned.
These include Hedera, Redbelly Network, R3 Corda, Canvas Connect, and other Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible networks.
To facilitate industry participation, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) is providing regulatory relief to selected entities.
This measure aims to streamline the testing process and enable responsible experimentation with new financial technologies. The regulatory instrument has been published on the Federal Register of Legislation.
Key participants include the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Westpac, ANZ, Fireblocks, Zerocap, Northern Trust, and several others.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) and the Australian Treasury are also supporting the project through representation on the steering committee.
The pilot phase is expected to run for six months, with a final report to be released in the first quarter of 2026.
Findings from the project will inform the RBA’s ongoing research into digital settlement systems and their potential role in enhancing the efficiency of Australia’s wholesale financial markets.