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Research Program

Central Bank Digital Currency Architecture

We map the evolution of sovereign digital money, studying the geopolitical implications, privacy-preserving technologies, and the competitive interplay between CBDCs and private stablecoins.

Program Lead

Guest Contributors Network

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Core Focus Areas

Wholesale CBDC Networks

Analyzing settlement layer trials (e.g., Eurosystem DLT trials) that utilize central bank money for interbank settlement and cross-border corridors.

Retail CBDC & Privacy

Evaluating the architectural designs for a Digital Euro or sovereign equivalents, focusing on offline capabilities, ledger privacy, and holding limits to prevent bank disintermediation.

Monetary Sovereignty

Assessing the geopolitical threats of "dollarization by stablecoin" and the defensive strategies adopted by emerging market central banks.

Stablecoin Ecosystems

Tracking the issuance models of e-money tokens (EMTs) under MiCA, and their utility as the defacto settlement rails for decentralized economies.

Design Models

Retail CBDC

Direct claims on the central bank accessible to the general public, primarily designed to ensure public access to sovereign money in a digital format (e.g., Digital Euro).

Wholesale CBDC

Restricted-access digital tokens used exclusively by financial institutions for interbank settlement, cross-border payments, and securities transactions.

Hybrid Architecture

A two-tier model where the central bank issues the CBDC and manages the core ledger, while private financial institutions handle KYC, distribution, and retail customer service.

Synthetic CBDC (sCBDC)

Privately issued stablecoins that are 100% fully backed by central bank reserves, effectively outsourcing issuance while maintaining strict sovereign peg integrity.

Institutional Observatories

Institutional Indexing & Research Visibility

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SSRN Indexed
Zenodo / CERN

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): 10.5281/zenodo.dcm.research.2026.14