The UK government has awarded a highly coveted grant to the British blockchain company, Millicent, to support its research on stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
In a press release published by the company, Millicent revealed that it has received a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Innovate UK SMART Award sponsored by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
With this prestigious grant, Millicent will be provided with the needed resources to continue the development of its digital finance network.
Commenting on the latest development, assessors from Innovate UK said, "Millicent is a game-changing project that could change the way we bank and spend; [its] impact could be very significant to the U.K., financially, socially, and technically, as it can lead the way for a U.K. system backed by the Bank of England."
Millicent uses a next-generation hybrid distributed ledger technology (DLT) which combines Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) speeds with blockchain's structure.
Led by the former Wall Street banker, Steller Dyer, Millicent intends to "transform the world's outdated financial system into an open, borderless and interconnected digital network, underpinned by a suite of regulation-compliant stablecoins."
The project's highly-interoperable and ultra-scalable ecosystem allegedly processes over 10,000 transactions per second, with sub-second settlements, data, and asset transfers, and smart contract calls with major public and enterprise blockchain networks.
Millicent's CEO, Stella Dyer noted, "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."
Millicent is currently the first stablecoin and CBDC project to receive funding directly from the British government. This comes at a time when central banks across the globe continue to mull over how to issue the digital versions of their fiat currencies.
This award signals the UK government's growing interest in the mainstream issuance and acceptance of privately issued stablecoins and hybrid public-private CBDCs.
Earlier in June 2021, the Bank of England had hinted at providing bank-like regulations for stablecoin issuers, as it continued to research on how to effectively regulate the space.
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