Is Ripple’s XRP lawsuit behind KaJ Labs’ CBDC trial in Brazil?
Is it a coincidence that KaJ Labs scored a partnership with Brazil’s central bank after donating such an amount to Ripple’s defense?
KaJ Labs, a Seattle blockchain firm, has initiated discussions with the Central Bank of Brazil to partner on the country’s CBDC real rollout.
The firm will use its proprietary cryptocurrency platform, Lithosphere, as the means to prepare the trial for Brazil’s digital currency as legal tender.
KaJ Labs founder, Joel Kasr, said: “KaJ Labs will focus on how interoperability could be achieved between various CBDCs and other DLT solutions.”
Brazil has been exploring CBDCs since 2020. Officials at the Central Bank of Brazil had conversations with Ripple executives at the time to evaluate how to go about it, namely using the private version of the XRP ledger.
In June 2021, the BCB announced the blueprint for the next steps to build out its digital currency project.
KaJ Labs, the firm that will execute part of that blueprint in order to make Brazil’s CBDC a reality, is very friendly with Ripple Labs and it is not by chance.
The company led by Joel Kasr is grateful to Ripple for having developed a network for fast, low-cost cross-border money transfers with XRP. Ripple’s work has “paved the way for innovations such as Lithosphere”, the firm stated.
Lithosphere is powered by AI and Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) for intelligent smart contracts and a novel Myriad Distributed Key Management (MDKM) scheme for key management.
KaJ Labs went out of their way to stand alongside Ripple during the ongoing lawsuit with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm has donated a total of $95 million toward Ripple’s legal defense fund.
So, is it a coincidence that KaJ Labs scored a partnership with Brazil’s central bank after donating such an amount to Ripple’s defense? Finance Feeds didn’t get an immediate response, but will be updating the article as soon as a comment is provided.
The trial to partner with the Central Bank of Brazil to launch digital real CBDC is an achievement in the company’s importance within the cryptocurrency environment.
Brazil plans to digitalize the Brazilian real and could release Central Bank digital currency as early as 2022, provided the infrastructure and necessary conditions for implementing digital currency are met.
Launched in 2020, the country’s PIX instant payment system enables users to transfer and receive payments via smartphone in seconds and can form the backbone for a larger CBDC.
KaJ Labs’ Lithosphere will assist with distributed ledger technology (DLT), tokenizing the bonds and the wholesale payment token using its custom blockchain interoperability solutions.
The trial will explore both forms of tokenized money to settle debenture or bond transactions, to be issued, settled, and cleared on a permissioned blockchain.
