UK government awards decent funding for blockchain firm Millicent

The grant is intended to fuel the development of blockchains-based solutions for a number of use cases and also assisting in the nation’s strives to launch a central bank digital currency.

Research and development (R&D) credits are a government initiative to reward businesses for investing in innovation. These grants are open to UK-registered organizations, who can apply for a share of up to £25 million, for innovating commercially-viable solutions that can impact the UK economy.

“Millicent is a game-changing project that could change the way we bank and spend; [its] impact could be very significant to the UK, financially, socially and technically, as it can lead the way for a UK system backed by the Bank of England,” said assessors from Innovate UK.

Co-funded by the UK government, Millicent is a regulator-friendly distributed network built to ignite the global mass adoption of digital finance. Its CEO and co-founder, Stella Dyer, is a Wall Street veteran with years of experience spanning senior roles with Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and managing Goldman Sachs’ global high tech investment banking unit.

Millicent’s DAG-based consensus can process upwards of 10,000 transactions per second—5x VISA’s network average—with sub-second settlement and negligible energy use. With transaction fees from one one-thousandth of a penny, cross-border compliance, and accessible user services with on and off-chain utility, Millicent says it paves the way for true financial inclusion.

Millicent also bridges enterprise and public blockchains, as well as traditional financial systems, supporting CBDCs and stablecoins, institutional access to DeFi, fiat on & off-ramping, tokenized assets, etc.

Central banks are exploring digital currencies

“Millicent’s decentralized finance network integrates with existing open banking frameworks worldwide, creating—for the first time in history—a universal financial system, with currencies that can easily flow across borders as well as between on-chain and off-chain ecosystems. Moreover, Millicent’s ultra-scalable and highly-interoperable ecosystem will process tens of thousands of transactions per second, with sub-second finality, as well as transfer data, assets, and smart contract calls with major public and enterprise blockchain networks,” the statement further reads.

The central banks of China, the UK, Sweden and almost all major economies are investigating or developing a CBDC to modernise their financial systems. China, however, is a front-runner in this global race, and its e-CNY is the closest to fruition.

“In today’s system, it’s usually the people with the least money who pay the most for financial services. Millicent is designed to level the playing field for everyone, creating an ‘Internet of Value’ that is open and accessible to all,” said Millicent CEO Stella Dyer.