Reserve Bank of Australia’s Project Acacia Advances with Wholesale CBDC Trials

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has escalated its Project Acacia initiative, selecting key industry players to explore the integration of digital money into Australia's financial infrastructure. The project, a collaboration with the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), will test stablecoins, tokenized bank deposits, and a pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC) across 24 use cases.

Participants range from fintech startups to major banks, with trials spanning private markets, carbon credits, and fixed income. The RBA will leverage multiple distributed ledger technology platforms, including Hedera, R3 Corda, and EVM-compatible networks, over the next six months.

This phase marks a strategic push to assess how tokenized assets and CBDCs could enhance wholesale market efficiency. The inclusion of real-money applications underscores the RBA's commitment to practical, scalable solutions for decentralized finance (DeFi) adoption.