Bank of Lithuania Envisions Future Cross-Industry Blockchain Platform

The Bank of Lithuania has revealed ambitious long-term plans to develop its blockchain platform for use beyond the financial services sector.

On May 26, the central bank's blockchain-based sandbox, LBChain project, completed its third and final stage.

In a wrap-up meeting this morning, BoL's blockchain project manager Andrius Adamonis said that the bank ultimately envisions moving beyond LBChain to develop a future "LTChain" - short for Lithuania Chain - that would have non-financial applications.

This future LTChain would see the bank cooperating with other public institutions and seeking to attract start-ups from non-financial sectors, including energy, healthcare and transportation.

In the short term, Adamonis revealed that the central bank has plans to launch LBChain in the fourth quarter of this year, as well as to finalize its commercial procurement with the fintechs and service providers currently involved in the LBChain project.

In its earliest stage, the BoL had selected Deloitte, IBM and Tieto to work with fintechs on developing and testing their solutions.

In fall 2019, the bank chose IBM and Tieto to proceed as finalists vying to develop the LBChain platform itself.

Adamonis noted that in response to feedback from the financial services sector, the bank had focused R&D on permissioned systems rather than on public blockchains, choosing therefore to base LBChain on R3's Corda and Hyperledger Fabric.

Their projects include a solution for blockchain-based regulatory reporting, a blockchain platform for green bond issuance, and a blockchain-based digital bank.

Adamonis said the project had been successful in attracting foreign investment, spurring cooperation with academic institutions and deepening the bank's technological capacities with blockchain.