The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has revealed the details of its project which aims to place a tokenized form of the Singaporean Dollar (SGD) on a distributed ledger.

A joint report from the MAS and consulting firm Deloitte outlines “Project Ubin” in which the central bank, along with a group of banks in Singapore, is developing a payment system prototype using DLT in which bank users can exchange currency with one another. R3 has also collaborated with the group on the initiative.

Announced last November, Project Ubin is a digital cash-on-ledger project run in partnership between MAS and R3, with the participation of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, DBS Bank, The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited, J.P. Morgan, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, OCBC Bank, Singapore Exchange, United Overseas Bank, as well as BCS Information Systems as a technology provider.

The project is similar to the Project Jasper carried out by the Bank of Canada. The BoC recently revealed that the research has led the conclusion that the blockchain technology is currently not ready to underpin the wholesale interbank payment system.

Phase 1 of the multi-phase Ubin project ran for six weeks from 14 November 2016 to 23 December 2016. It served as the foundation to assess the feasibility and implications of distributed ledger technology (DLT), and to identify the elements required for future enhancements.

“Project Ubin’s Phase 1 was successful as it has brought together a wide range of parties (including non-R3 member banks, R3 member banks, SGX and BCSIS as a technology provider)”, the report said, adding that in Phase 1 a “working interbank transfer prototype on a private Ethereum network was built.”

According to the report, Project Ubin will be implemented in phases, starting with a DLT for domestic payments. Subsequent phases will explore cross-border payments in a single currency, settling different currencies and culminate with risk free cross currency securities settlements.