Australia’s ‘Project Acacia’ enters next stage of testing

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Australia’s central bank announced it was moving to the next phase of its tokenized asset settlement research project, having selected the industry participants and use cases to explore how digital money and tokenization can support wholesale financial markets.

In a July 10 statement, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) said that the initiative, known as ‘Project Acacia,’ had settled on 24 innovative use cases from a diverse selection of organizations, ranging from local fintechs to major banks, for the next stage of the project.

There will be 19 pilot use cases involving real money and real asset transactions, and five proof‑of‑concept (PoC) use cases involving simulated transactions. The use cases involve a range of asset classes, including fixed income, private markets, trade receivables, and carbon credits.

Project Acacia was launched in November 2024 as a joint initiative between the RBA and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC). It is also being supported by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), and the Australian Treasury.

The next stage of the project seeks to test a variety of settlement assets, including stablecoins, bank deposit tokens, and pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), as well as new ways of using banks’ existing exchange settlement accounts at the RBA.

Several major Australian banks, including the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Australia and New Zealand Banking Corporation, and Westpac Banking Corporation, are among the pilot participants.

The RBA also revealed that the pilot wholesale CBDC for testing use cases will be issued on a range of private and public‑permissioned distributed ledger technology (DLT) platforms, including Hedera, Redbelly Network, R3 Corda, Canvas Connect, and other EVM Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)‑compatible networks.

“Project Acacia represents an opportunity for further collaborative exploration on tokenised asset markets and the future of money by the public and private sectors in Australia,” said Brad Jones, Assistant Governor (Financial System) at the RBA. “The use cases selected in this project will help us to better understand how innovations in central bank and private digital money, alongside payments infrastructure, might help to uplift the functioning of wholesale financial markets in Australia.”

He added that “ensuring that Australia’s payments and monetary arrangements are fit‑for‑purpose in the digital age is a strategic priority for the RBA.”

The use cases will be tested over the next six months, and a report on the project’s findings is expected to be published in the first quarter of 2026.

“Project Acacia will allow industry and regulators to work together to learn more about how these use cases may reshape the financial services industry, potentially boosting efficiency and foster economic growth,” said Kate O’Rourke, ASIC Commissioner. “ASIC sees useful applications for the technologies underlying digital assets in wholesale markets.”

ASIC, Australia’s top finance sector regulator, is providing regulatory relief to participants to support and streamline the project.

Meanwhile, Professor Talis Putnins, Chief Scientist at DFCRC, highlighted the potential gains the project could yield.

“Potential economic gains in markets and cross-border payments could be in the order of AUD19 billion per year,” said Putnins. “Project Acacia is a significant step towards realising these gains, by providing evidence on the forms of money and settlement models that best enable tokenised real‑world asset markets.”

He added that “the real money settlement models being tested, including issuing pilot wholesale CBDC on third-party platforms, reflects another world‑first for Australia in this rapidly evolving field.”

Project Acacia: Launch and goals

Launched in November 2024, the initial phase of Project Acacia involved a public consultation by the RBA, in which it sought input from ecosystem players to participate in the studies on the role of privately issued digital currencies and CBDCs in improving the tokenized asset market.

A core aim of Project Acacia is experimenting with a new form of tokenized central bank money, focusing on issuance on third-party blockchain networks, rather than being issued by the central bank itself.

Turning to third parties, the project posited, offers a raft of benefits, such as cross-network settlements and serving as a bridge for different assets.

“The aim is to examine how innovation in wholesale markets could be enabled by new forms of digital money and supporting infrastructure,” said RBA Deputy Governor Brad Jones when the project was announced. “The role that tokenized asset markets could play in improving the efficiency and resilience of wholesale payments and settlements, and in enhancing cross-border payments, are areas of particular interest.”

Another goal of Project Acacia was to experiment with deposit tokens, stablecoins, reserve-backed digital currency, and funds in Exchange Settlement Accounts.

Now that the use cases and participant organizations have been selected, the project takes its next steps toward achieving these various goals.

Watch: Richard Baker on engineering a smarter financial world with blockchain