Bank of Korea: "CBDC Simulation Requires Reduced Waiting Time for Real-Time Large-Volume Transactions"

Completion of Phase 2 of the Research Project Over 10 Months

The Korean virtual currency market is a distant regulated financial market.

[Asia Economy Reporter Seo So-jeong] The Bank of Korea announced on the 7th that it has completed a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot research project conducted over 10 months since August last year.

The Bank of Korea carried out the CBDC pilot research project in two phases. In the first phase, it checked the basic functions such as manufacturing, issuance, and distribution of the distributed ledger-based CBDC pilot system, and in the second phase, it examined the feasibility of implementing extended functions such as offline transactions, digital asset transactions, and policy support tasks.

It also assessed the applicability of new technologies such as zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technology to enhance personal information protection and distributed ledger scalability technology.

As a result of the project, all tested functions operated normally, and it was confirmed that the offline CBDC function, where both the sender's and receiver's transaction devices are not connected to the internet communication network, can operate independently from the online CBDC.

However, the Bank of Korea noted that to handle real-time large-volume transactions at peak times at the level of other electronic payment services, it is necessary to reduce response waiting times, and there are some limitations in applying new technologies (distributed ledger scalability technology, ZKP) to actual systems at this point.

Yu Hee-jun, head of the Digital Currency Technology Team at the Bank of Korea's Financial Settlement Department, explained, "The CBDC pilot system was measured to be able to process up to 2,000 transactions per second, but as it reached maximum performance, the response waiting time was confirmed to be delayed up to one minute," adding, "There are some limitations in processing transactions in real time during peak times when transactions are concentrated."

Yu said, "Currently, to more closely examine the functions and performance of the already established CBDC pilot system, we are conducting additional experiments in cooperation with 15 financial institutions," and added, "In the future, to assess the usability of CBDC, we plan to deepen experiments in practical environments in collaboration with financial institutions and international organizations."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.