China’s Blockchain-Based Service Network to Integrate Central Bank Digital Currency

China’s Blockchain-based Service Network (BSN)  – a permissioned blockchain network for building decentralized applications and tokens – plans on releasing a beta central bank digital currency (CBDC) as early as the second half of 2021, according to a Jan. 15 blog.

• The Chinese-state sanctioned BSN is currently designing a universal digital payment network (UDPN) over the next half decade. CBDCs from different nation-states will be supported by the network, the blog claims.
• The UDPN network will be available through API connection as well for “any information system such as banking, insurance, ERP, and mobile applications. . . to enable a standardized digital currency transfer method and payment procedure.”
• The network is currently in the design stage, although public city nodes (PCN) are being rolled out through China in various states of completion, the blog states.
• As CoinDesk reported, the BSN recently incorporated connections to multiple public projects into its network such as the cloud-computing project Oasis, meta-protocol Polkadot and China-based public blockchain Bityuan.
• The BSN further expects to complete integrations with a total of 30 public blockchains this year, the blog concludes.