According to Bloomberg News, one of the first central bank digital currencies globally, faces a lot of pain that seems to be growing.
Dcash has been offline for a month
DCash – the Eastern Caribbean dollar’s digital version used by seven nations has not been online for almost a month now. There might be a few more days before the service is restored fully, as stated by bank officials.
The crash of DCash has thrown light on the few technical hiccups that the governments must face as they intend to embrace sovereign e-currencies.
As per Josh Lipsky, the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, director, this is an instance of a case study that highlights what might go wrong at the advent of an expansion and rollout of a digital currency. Josh also said that every country that has tried to implement the rollout has had to face some problems.
The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank launched DCash last March when it captured the headlines as it is the first digital currency being made use of by monetary union. The bank still regards the project in its pilot stage, although it has been rolled out to all except one of the member states.
On January 14th, reports from the bank made it clear that the platform for DCash was suffering interruptions that had brought all transactions to a halt but did not compromise on any data.
Bloomberg News reports that, as per Karina Johnson, a project manager for DCash at the bank, as revealed in an email, stated that the glitch was related to a certificate that is expiring on the Hyperledger Fabric version that is hosting the DCash ledger. This has caused the bank to roll out the updates.
Bitt Inc., the bank’s technical partner that is Barbados based company on the project and has been supporting Nigeria’s eNaira effort, has directed all questions to the bank.
According to Atlantic Council’s Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker, as many as two dozen CBDCs are either in the launching or pilot phase across the world, and several of them are also in emerging markets. Compared to the crypto counterparts like Ether and Bitcoin, CBDCs are digital extensions of fiat currency and are issued and controlled by the government.
Geo.F.Huggins & Co, a conglomerate based in Grenada, is the first company that accepted DCash payment one year ago, even before it was officially launched and during the pandemic at its peak.
