Ten European banks switch on their own blockchain: RL1 goes live in Luxembourg

What RL1 actually is

RL1 has been live since 28 July 2026: a private, permissioned blockchain owned outright by European banks. The network operates through a Luxembourg-registered European Cooperative Society, a legal form chosen deliberately because no single participant can dominate it. Unlike a public chain, not everyone can simply join in — anyone wanting to run a node or settle a transaction has to be admitted first.

That sounds unexciting, and that is exactly the point. Banks putting bonds, funds and collateral onto a blockchain need to be able to explain to their competent authority who can see what, who carries the liability and where the data sits. A network governed by the banks themselves and domiciled in the EU answers those questions far more easily than a chain anyone can join anonymously.

Who is at the table

Ten institutions are founding members: ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis CIB, SC Ventures and Seturion. NatWest has said it will join shortly. Each of the ten founders carries equal voting power — the largest balance sheet buys no extra influence.

Governance is split into three layers: a general assembly, a supervisory board and an operational management board. Day-to-day leadership sits with Henning Vollbehr, previously managing director of SWIAT. That is no accident. SWIAT supplies the software and acts as technical operator, but the network itself belongs to RL1. That separation between owner and supplier is precisely the model regulators are comfortable with.

Why banks want a network of their own

For the past few years European banks have experimented mostly on public chains or on the infrastructure of a single vendor. Both routes carry a problem. On a public chain, banks have no control over who else is transacting or at what cost. With a single vendor, dependency creeps in: if that party changes course or gets acquired, settlement grinds to a halt.

RL1 tries to sidestep both traps by placing ownership with a broad group of banks and buying in the technology. The use cases the network lists are wide-ranging: tokenised bonds, funds, real-world assets, collateral, repo, securities lending, digital money and stablecoins, with settlement in commercial bank money or central bank money. That is effectively the entire institutional capital market, only on a shared ledger.

The first real test: a €100 million KfW bond

Before the handover, SWIAT's production network had already run for three years and processed more than fifty transactions worth over €700 million combined. Modest against the scale of the European bond market, but it does prove this is not a laboratory setup.

The genuine trial arrives this autumn. German development bank KfW is moving a €100 million digital bond from Cashlink on Polygon to SWIAT on RL1. Migrating an existing security from one chain to another is harder technically and legally than a fresh issuance: holders, rights and registration all have to move without a single second of ambiguity over who owns what. If it works, RL1 immediately has a reference case capable of persuading other issuers.

How the ECB fits in

RL1 does not stand apart from what the European Central Bank is building. Pontes launches in the third quarter of 2026, the ECB track that enables settlement in central bank money for transactions taking place on a DLT network. For RL1 that is the missing link: without central bank money, the cash leg of every transaction remains a detour through traditional payment rails.

The ECB is also working on Appia, a blueprint for a long-term solution expected by 2028. Line up the timelines and a pattern emerges: the banks' infrastructure and the central bank's infrastructure are converging at the same pace. That is hardly coincidental, and it explains why the launch is happening now.

What this means for you

As a retail investor you cannot buy anything on RL1 or open a wallet for it — this is a closed network for institutions. The launch still matters, though. Every euro of bonds and funds that migrates to a DLT network strengthens the argument that blockchain technology is more than a toy for speculators, and that lends the whole sector credibility with European regulators.

More practically: as banks shift settlement onto networks like this, the bridge between traditional investments and crypto gets shorter. Custody services, tokenised money market funds used as collateral and euro stablecoins for the cash leg all move within reach of products you will eventually see at your own bank or broker. Watch the autumn in particular — if the KfW migration succeeds, the rest of the market will almost certainly follow.

Sources: RL1, SWIAT, KfW, ABN AMRO, European Central Bank, crypto.news. Last checked: 29 July 2026.