Experts invited to join technical talks on digital euro

8 July 2022

The ECB is inviting technology experts to take part in online technical talks to explore options for the design of a central bank digital currency.

The talks will focus on the large-scale application of privacy-enhancing technologies in settlement of retail payments. The topics that will be explored are:

• How can the payment asset issuer exert control over settlement rules and maintain adequate, tamper-proof evidence of the amounts in circulation, while also minimising the accessibility of sensitive information? (“Sensitive information” is to be understood as any information that allows the operator of a ledger to link transaction data to an individual user.)
• What are successful examples of large-scale applications?
• How can back-end IT architecture facilitate these privacy-enhancing techniques?

The talks will be held at expert level as closed sessions with members of the ECB’s digital euro project team. Each talk will comprise a presentation lasting 20 minutes, followed by 25 minutes for questions and answers approximately.

To take part, please email DigitalEuro@ecb.europa.eu by 20 July 2022, stating which topic you wish to address and describing, in no more than 500 words, the technical problems envisaged and solutions you would like to put forward. We will assess your application for its relevance to the topics listed above, its practical potential within a widely-used retail payments solution and the novelty of its approach.

Background to the technical talks

On 1 October 2021 the ECB launched an investigation phase to consider what a digital euro might look like. During this phase, which is expected to take two years, we will look at how a digital euro could be designed and distributed to retailers and the public. After the investigation phase concludes, the Eurosystem will decide whether to start developing a digital euro.