The European Central Bank, through executive board member Piero Cipollone, is advocating for putting central bank reserves directly on-chain to preserve monetary sovereignty as financial markets adopt distributed ledger technology. The Eurosystem ran over 50 pilot projects across nine jurisdictions in 2024, demonstrating that market participants prefer risk-free central bank money for settling DLT-based transactions over private stablecoins. The Pontes project, scheduled for launch in Q3 2026, will connect DLT platforms with the ECB’s existing TARGET Services infrastructure. The Appia roadmap, published in March 2026, aims to establish a comprehensive framework for a European tokenized financial ecosystem by 2028, contingent on collaboration between public institutions and private market participants.
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