Project Promissa showed that paper-based promissory notes, used to manage countries' financial commitments to multilateral development banks, can be redesigned using distributed ledger technology to address operational challenges and improve efficiency.
Project Promissa explores how to make the funding processes of multilateral development banks (MDBs) fit for the 21st century, a goal of the G20. Today, MDBs fund their activities in various ways, including through member subscriptions and contributions, which are usually paid in cash or paper-based promissory notes.
Project Promissa reimagines the management of promissory notes by digitising these financial commitments and putting them on a distributed ledger in a process known as tokenisation. The project built a proof-of-concept (PoC) platform for tokenised promissory notes and tested the following key features with several central banks, ministries of finance and MDBs.
The results demonstrate that the PoC effectively addresses key pain points in the current lifecycle of promissory notes. It is also technically feasible, with no major issues identified in the tokenisation of promissory notes, subject to further study of the legal aspects identified in the preliminary review.