Launch Regulated Layer One platform: central pillar of future European digital financial ecosystem

A total of ten European financial institutions signed up to support the launch of this European DLT Network, under the umbrella of this Society that remains open for more institutions to join. They are thereby supporting the transition of the production-proven SWIAT network into RL1, moving from the formation phase into a live institutional framework.

In this blog we will go into more detail into why this initiative,  what this RL1 network practically is, what are the tasks  of the European Cooperative Society and who are the various participating banks. We will also describe the shared infrastructure and the joint governance, the various use cases it will support, its alignment with regulatory requirements. But above all why this cooperative model could matter and what it may bring.

Why this initiative: main goals

Anchored in Europe and open to regulated financial institutions worldwide, RL1 is built to carry the market beyond isolated pilots and towards shared, production-grade infrastructure, providing the platform for tokenised financial market instruments and services.

RL1 aims to unite European financial institutions around a shared distributed ledger and become a pan-European, neutral, and interoperable blockchain for digital assets and payments, serving as a foundational pillar of Europe’s future financial ecosystem

By bringing together leading financial institutions, RL1 aims to reduce today’s fragmentation of blockchain networks within the regulated financial sector, connect regulated participants across jurisdictions, and set a common standard for institutional-grade tokenisation at scale. The long-term objective targets establishing a unified standard for cross-border digital asset custody and settlement.

SWIAT: Pre RL1-launch period

The private permissioned network RL1 is built on proven infrastructure (technology and processes) previously developed by German Secure Worldwide Interbank Asset Transfer (SWIAT), which has now transferred ownership to the cooperative.

SWIAT is a German fintech company specialising in the development of blockchain software and a tokenisation platform for an open, decentralised financial market infrastructure. SWIAT reported processing over €700 million in more than 50 live operational transactions completed across authorised nodes during the three-year initial testing phase. Performance testing demonstrated the distributed ledger’s capacity to settle institutional securities continuously without technical disruptions.

Regulated Layer One (RL1)

Regulated Layer One (RL1) is positioning itself as a European neutral collaborative network, which has been specifically developed for regulated financial markets, aiming to streamline operations and enhance interoperability among its members. RL1 is jointly owned, operated, and governed by European financial institutions, ensuring openness, sovereignty, and credible neutrality.

RL1 is private and permissioned and not intended for public cryptocurrency trading. The RL1 Network is based on SWIAT’s production-grade DLT Network.  It has been designed to establish the foundation for a common distributed ledger under open and credible governance, enabling regulated market participants to deploy and scale DLT use cases.

RL1 will serve as the connecting infrastructure for Europe’s digital financial market, enabling participating institutions to move from isolated tokenization initiatives to an integrated, liquid, and scalable capital market ecosystem. RL1 is intended to let regulated firms transact and develop capital-markets applications on a common ledger, with no public token or retail trading product announced.

European Cooperative Society

RL1 has been established  as a European Cooperative Society (SCE) based in Luxembourg, starting operations with 10 founding members under a jointly owned governance model. It owns and operates a private, permissioned blockchain network built for regulated financial markets, providing a common infrastructure layer for institutional digital assets.

SWIAT has transferred ownership of the network and the corresponding contractual framework optimized for regulatory compliance  to the cooperative, effectively moving the project from a vendor-led or sponsor-led stage into a jointly controlled model, and the corresponding contractual framework optimized for regulatory compliance.  which will be owned and controlled by financial institutions.

The SCE brings together leading financial institutions to overcome the current fragmentation of blockchain networks within the regulated financial sector, and to create a neutral, member-owned, pan-European DLT utility for tokenised assets, digital money and next-generation financial markets use cases.

Each member has equal governance and decision-making rights under a ‘one member, one vote’ model. This governance structure ensures that no single partner or group of developers or node operators exercises undue control over the network. This is the essential prerequisite for the success of RL1.

With its European cooperative design and its commitment to neutrality, RL1 avoids the pitfalls of siloed or rent-seeking models and instead acts as enabling infrastructure for the benefit of Europe’s financial ecosystem.

Participating banks

Ten leading European financial institutions form the founding group of the cooperative blockchain network based in Luxembourg. This group is setting up a shared blockchain structure aimed at regulated financial markets and tokenized assets.

• Founding members

The founding members of this pan-European blockchain initiative include banks from Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Spain, among others. The full list of members includes ABN Amro, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel, DekaBank, DZ Bank, LBBW, Natixis CIB, Standard Chartered’s SC Ventures and Boerse Stuttgart’s Seturion. KfW and L-Bank, which have also been members of the initiative since 2025 and 2026 respectively, will continue to actively support RL1 in its establishment and expansion.

• Aim

Aim is to broaden the institutional adoption and user base of digital assets.  Additional participants are expected to join shortly, with the network remaining open to further financial market participants,  whereby new members will receive equal governance rights once they join. Concrete discussions are currently underway with a number of other renowned European banks regarding their participation in RL1 including NatWest who has been an active participant in Phase 1 of the initiative. Ongoing membership talks with banks may broaden adoption across Europe’s regulated financial sector.

• Shared infrastructure

The launch of the Regulated Layer One (RL1) initiative is a collective European effort to build a shared, neutral and regulatory-compliant DLT infrastructure for the financial industry. RL1 is a private, permissioned blockchain network built for institutional use rather than public, open participation.

• Common infrastructure

It is conceived as common infrastructure, an enabling layer for issuers, investors, custodians, marketplaces, and payment providers to connect on one blockchain, ensuring interoperability and scalability with regulate-compliance. The permissioned design and operation of RL1 as an open, regulated infrastructure empowers its members to jointly develop and scale their own digital solutions and  transparent protocols, thereby establishing the base for common industry standards. A common, permissioned ledger may make it easier for member banks to reuse compliance and settlement processes.

• Overcome market fragmentation

This architecture seeks to overcome market fragmentation caused by isolated bank pilots conducted independently by single financial institutions. The initiative aims to unify European banking infrastructure through a neutral shared ledger system. The infrastructure is described as a way to move beyond fragmented pilots. RL1 is aimed to reduce fragmentation and help establish common standards for token custody, settlement and collateral flows. That model seeks to give regulated participants a neutral place to issue or settle digital instruments without each institution building a separate network.

• Growing need for shared infrastructure

Recent months have highlighted the growing need for such a shared infrastructure, as tokenisation has gradually progressed from pilot projects towards a scalable market infrastructure. The ECB’s initiatives – including Appia and Pontes – as well as stablecoins, tokenised money market funds, digital bonds, smart derivatives, solutions for mobilising collateral and settlement platforms all rely on shared infrastructures that reduce fragmentation and enable reliable and efficient settlement.

• Infrastructure developed by SWIAT

The private, permissioned blockchain is built on infrastructure developed by SWIAT, which has now transferred ownership of the network to the cooperative. SWIAT will continue to be RL1’s key technology partner in the future, as both software supplier and service provider for RL1 to ensure seamless transition and operational support.

SWIAT’s existing application ecosystem including offerings and productive solutions like Bafin-supervised German electronic securities registries will transition seamlessly. SWIAT will offer participants solutions for issuance, custody, collateral management and other digital capital market applications. SWIAT’s software is fully compatible with RL1, enabling immediate implementation of use cases such as bond tokenization. Additionally, RL1 participants will retain the flexibility to develop their own solutions on the platform.

Joint governance

RL1’s member governance is central to the design. RL1 provides not only a shared infrastructure, but also a joint governance that overcomes existing market fragmentation due to different DLT networks. The operating entity SCE established its legal headquarters in Luxembourg as an equal-governance financial cooperative.

• Jointly owned, operated and governed

RL1 will be jointly owned, operated and governed by European market participants under a cooperative model, ensuring credible neutrality and sovereignty. Governance rests exclusively with its members on the basis of equal decision-making rights over the cooperative’s governance, technology development and direction.

• Equal voting rights

Each participating entity holds equal voting rights within the corporate governing framework of the project. This configuration prevents any single bank from exercising exclusive control over the shared distributed ledger and its consensus validation mechanisms. All RL1 members benefit from equal decision-making rights, influence over the network’s further development and direct access to a functioning ecosystem at an institutional level.

• Shared network

The shared network aims to reduce fragmentation caused by financial institutions operating separate distributed ledger systems. Using a shared network could help address fragmentation across financial markets-especially where banks and other institutions deploy distinct distributed ledger systems. In practical terms, fewer separate ledgers can reduce duplicated development, simplify integration efforts, and potentially speed up cross-institution settlement experiments.

• Technical neutrality 

The equal governance model guarantees technical neutrality for the shared ledger across member transactions. The cooperative structure protects interbank clearing operations from commercial bias or unilateral operational advantages among participating financial institutions.

What will it support: target use cases

RL1, the permissioned network, is aimed to provide a shared infrastructure, that will support institutional applications and use cases. The cooperatively managed infrastructure will handle digital money and financial instruments across regional capital markets, including digital money, digital bond issuance, tokenized real-world assets and bank-issued stablecoins. Next to that it will deliver collateral management, blockchain-based settlement, cash-on-chain solutions, on-chain collateral mobilization, repo processes and derivatives margining.

Why RL1’s cooperative model could matter for tokenized markets

Tokenization in traditional finance has progressively blown up, often driven by pilots and consortia, but scaling remains difficult when participants operate on disconnected infrastructures. RL1’s emphasis on reducing fragmentation directly targets one of the sector’s recurring friction points.

At the same time, it is important to recognize that RL1 is permissioned, meaning access and participation are restricted relative to public networks. That trade-off can be beneficial for compliance and integration in regulated markets, but it also raises questions about interoperability with other ledgers and token ecosystems-particularly if tokenized assets are expected to move across platforms over time.

Meet regulatory requirements

The underlying technical specifications align with regulatory requirements applicable across European Union jurisdictions. The RL1 permissioned blockchain was optimized to meet capital market regulatory compliance standards for institutional trading.

The Luxembourg entity oversees regulatory compliance and manages network consensus protocols across all nodes. Each participating bank retains identical authority to approve new institutional members joining the financial cooperative.

Real-world assets recorded on the network remain subject to oversight by competent banking regulatory authorities. The consortium maintains verification protocols to ensure strict compliance with anti-money laundering and know-your-customer regulations.

What may it bring?

This broad pan-European participant base creates, right from the start, an attractive ecosystem for a wide range of institutional use cases in the field of digital assets and tokenised financial market infrastructure.

• True interoperability

RL1’s shared network can reduce fragmentation. It is conceived as common infrastructure operated for the benefit of its members. With issuers, investors, infrastructure providers, marketplaces, trading counterparties, and cash solution providers all on one infrastructure, instead of a patchwork of incompatible pilots, sharing a common set of rules, true interoperability can be created.

As a permissioned, interoperable network, RL1 thus connects assets, services and access points for regulated institutions. RL1’s DLT network will offer a reliable and long-term solution for financial institutions to offer DLT-based financial services in compliance with IT-requirements for financial institutions.

• Immediate issuance of tokenized bonds

The system enables the immediate issuance of tokenized bonds among member banking institutions in the project. The platform maintains direct technical compatibility with legacy banking software through standardized application programming interfaces. Member institutions connect their existing database systems without requiring major structural overhauls to internal databases.

• Automate registration and custody workflows

The platform automates registration and custody workflows without relying on external clearing agents or third-party intermediaries. The infrastructure provides near real time collateral mobility across connected financial institutions. This functionality optimizes capital efficiency and reduces cross-border liquidity buffer requirements for participating consortium members.

Forward thinking

The launch of RL1 marks a significant step forward in the evolution of the European capabilities within the digital assets ecosystem. The objective is clear: to position RL1 as a central pillar of the future European financial ecosystem, fully aligned with the ambitions of the ECB’s Appia track and the European Savings and Investment Union

The network’s success will likely depend on attracting participants with complementary use cases such as custody, issuance, market settlement, and collateral management, while ensuring that shared standards hold up as the number of stakeholders increases. Future operational phases will evaluate integrating additional tokenized debt instruments and smart contracts on the ledger.

Going forward, RL1 will serve as the connecting infrastructure for Europe’s digital financial market, enabling participating institutions to move from isolated tokenization initiatives to an integrated, liquid, and scalable capital market ecosystem. This by establishing a shared, trust-based foundation for tokenised assets, digital money and next-generation settlement,

RL1 is positioned to become a core infrastructure for the global digital financial markets.  In this context, ensuring Europe’s digital sovereignty—while remaining open, competitive, and resilient—requires collective action and visionary industry leadership.