The Bank of Lithuania (BoL) has unveiled ambitious long-term plans to expand its blockchain platform for employment past the financial services sector. On May 26, the central bank’s blockchain-based sandbox, LBChain project, achieved its third and final stage. 

In a wrap-up meeting this morning, BoL’s blockchain project manager Andrius Adamonis stated that the bank eventually envisions going beyond LBChain to produce a future “LTChain” — short for Lithuania Chain — that would have non-financial applications. This future LTChain would understand the bank collaborating with other public institutions and trying to draw start-ups from non-financial sectors, including energy, healthcare, and transportation.

Bank of Lithuania intends to launch LBChain in Q4 2020

In the short term, Adamonis announced that the central bank has ideas to launch LBChain in the fourth quarter of this year and conclude its commercial procurement with the fintechs and service providers recently included in the LBChain project.

At its earliest stage, the BoL had chosen Deloitte, IBM, and Tieto to operate with fintechs to improve and test their solutions. In fall 2019, the bank decided IBM and Tieto proceed as finalists competing to improve the LBChain platform itself. Adamonis wrote that in reply to feedback from the financial services sector, the bank had concentrated R&D on permissioned systems sooner than on public blockchains, and consequently, to base LBChain on R3’s Corda and Hyperledger Fabric.

The five fintechs that were decided to take part in the third and final stage of the sandbox performed the results of their testing at the meeting today. Their projects involve a solution for blockchain-based regulatory reporting, a blockchain platform for green bond issuance, and a blockchain-based digital bank.

During its three stages, the sandbox has allowed 11 fintechs from eight countries to administer blockchain-focused research in a controlled regulatory environment. Adamonis stated the project had fortunately drawn foreign investment, spurred cooperation with academic institutions, and deepening the bank’s technological capacities with blockchain. 

He stated the BoL attempts to draw more international start-ups and strengthen its public-private collaborations. At the conclusion of last year, the BoL also unveiled its plans to deliver a digital, blockchain-based collector coin committed to commemorating Lithuania’s Act of Independence in 1918.