The Eurosystem launched a consultation on Appia on Wednesday, a long-term project intended to shape the development of a European tokenised financial ecosystem as market participants increasingly explore distributed ledger technology (DLT) in wholesale finance.

“With Appia, we are building a road from today’s financial system to tomorrow’s tokenised markets, firmly grounded in central bank money,” said Piero Cipollone, member of the ECB's executive board.

The programme will run alongside Pontes, the Eurosystem’s shorter-term operational offering, which is due to launch in the third quarter of 2026 and will enable central bank money settlement for DLT-based transactions through a bridge to TARGET Services-services developed and operated by the Eurosystem which ensure the free flow of cash, securities and collateral across Europe.

Appia, by contrast, is designed as a broader strategic initiative, with the Eurosystem aiming to produce a blueprint by 2028 for a future tokenised wholesale market covering payments, securities and related infrastructure.

The ECB said the project is intended to ensure that central bank money remains the anchor of the monetary system as wholesale markets adopt tokenisation and DLT, while also supporting financial stability, market integration and the smooth functioning of payment systems.

The initiative follows exploratory work carried out between May and November 2024, when 64 market participants took part in more than 50 trials and experiments on wholesale central bank money settlement using distributed ledger technology.

Network design and interoperability

A central question in the Appia work will be how future DLT-based infrastructure should be organised.

The Eurosystem said it will assess whether central bank money settlement should take place on a single shared network or across a limited number of interoperable networks, and what trade-offs those models would involve for resilience, fragmentation, governance and innovation.

It will also examine whether the network layer in a tokenised ecosystem should function as a neutral shared utility, with common standards and European governance designed to avoid market fragmentation and lower barriers to entry.

In the roadmap, the ECB said: “Shared infrastructures based on common standards could help reduce fragmentation, lower barriers to entry and support competition and innovation across Europe’s financial markets.”

The consultation also asks market participants for views on how Europe’s strategic autonomy can be protected in a tokenised market structure, including legal, technological, operational and governance considerations.

Collateral, settlement and market infrastructure

The Appia work programme will be organised around six building blocks, including asset interoperability and standards, monetary policy implementation and collateral management on DLT, tokenised central bank money infrastructure, cross-border links, legal and regulatory resilience, and implementation strategy.

The Eurosystem said it wants to investigate how tokenised assets can move across platforms, how collateral could be mobilised in a DLT environment and how central bank control over money and collateral can be maintained under different infrastructure models.

That work is likely to be relevant for market infrastructure providers, banks and other firms developing DLT-based issuance, trading, settlement and custody services.

The ECB also said DLT could make it possible to integrate more of the transaction lifecycle on a single platform, covering issuance, trading, settlement, custody and servicing, while supporting smart contracts and conditional settlement mechanisms.

Consultation open until April

Alongside the roadmap, the Eurosystem has invited public and private sector stakeholders to submit feedback and express interest in contributing to the analytical and practical work under Appia. The consultation includes questions on governance, standards, interoperability, network architecture and the provision of Eurosystem services in a tokenised environment.

It also allows respondents to propose contributions to specific Appia workstreams, although the Eurosystem said it will decide which types of collaborative work it wishes to pursue.

Responses must be submitted through an online survey by 22:00 CET on April 22 2026. The ECB said feedback received through the consultation will help inform the further operationalisation of Appia and the blueprint due in 2028.

The European Parliament has also approved the nomination of Boris Vujcic, the current governor of Croatian National Bank, as the next vice president of ECB.

ClearToken this week launched a settlement ecosystem for stablecoin foreign exchange and tokenised cash flows on the Canton Network, combining its FCA-authorised market infrastructure with the institutional blockchain platform to support PvP and DvP settlement.

Last week, the FIA and ISDA backed US clarification on capital treatment for tokenised securities. The industry groups said the move provides needed certainty for banks exploring distributed ledger technology in capital markets.