coindesk.com
Blockchain infrastructure company Chainlink said it is joining a group of banks that collectively represent over $10 trillion in assets under management to unlock real-time, stablecoin-based cross-border payments for foreign-exchange trades within a year.
The coalition, called Project Pangea, aims to redefine the global FX markets, Niki Ariyasinghe, Chainlink’s vice president of Asia-Pacific and the Middle East, said in a video interview on Tuesday. In addition to Chainlink, the group includes Qivalis, a euro stablecoin consortium backed by 37 European banks, and UniKA, a Korean banking alliance representing more than 10 commercial banks.
The project aims to explore moving foreign-exchange settlement from a traditional 48-hour (T+2) timeline toward near-instant (T+0) settlement using regulated euro- and South Korean won-pegged stablecoins, or crypto tokens whose value is tied 1:1 to the underlying currency.
The initiative will evaluate whether the stablecoins can be exchanged through atomic payment-versus-payment (PvP) settlement, in which both sides of a currency trade settle simultaneously or not at all, thereby reducing counterparty and settlement risk.
The project goes beyond a tech experiment, Ariyasinghe said. Chainlink is drawing a line in the sand between theoretical "proofs-of-concept" and actual infrastructure.
"This is not just a POC," Ariyasinghe said. "Everyone's coming in with their eyes wide open. Appetite is very much about building real infrastructure ... The target is live transactions within a legal, regulatory compliance framework within the next 12 months."
A $150 billion trade corridor
The initiative is focusing on the trade corridor between Europe and South Korea, an economic artery that processes over $150 billion in goods and services annually, making it one of the world's 15 largest trade routes. It also taps into regional trends: Industry data shows that 60% of all global stablecoin payments are happening in Asia.
"I completely agree with that stat," Ariyasinghe said. "It gives people a good indication of where real demand is. In less developed financial ecosystems, demand is growing, but the infrastructure isn't necessarily in place. These forms of tokenized cash are fulfilling a real need."
Rather than forcing legacy financial institutions to overhaul their computer systems or buy cryptocurrency, Project Pangea intends to act as a middleware translator. European banks will trigger transactions using Swift—the global messaging network they have used since the 1970s—and Chainlink’s infrastructure will translate those commands into instant "atomic swaps" on a neutral, independent ledger called the Pangea L1 Network.