A group of ten European financial institutions today launched Regulated Layer One (RL1), a shared blockchain network designed specifically for regulated financial markets. The consortium includes ABN AMRO, DekaBank, DZ BANK, and Natixis CIB, among others. The project consolidates one of Europe's longest-running blockchain initiatives for regulated markets, moving from pilot to production.
Who's behind it
The ten founding institutions are all established players in European banking and capital markets. ABN AMRO is a major Dutch bank, DekaBank is the securities services provider for the German Sparkassen group, DZ BANK is a central institution for Germany's cooperative banks, and Natixis CIB is the corporate and investment banking arm of Groupe BPCE. The full list of ten was not immediately disclosed, but the group said it represents a broad cross-section of European finance.
What RL1 does
RL1 is a permissioned blockchain — meaning only approved participants can join — built to handle regulated financial activities such as settlement of tokenized securities, digital bonds, and other asset classes. The network is jointly owned by the member institutions, which gives them direct governance over protocol changes, compliance rules, and access controls. That structure is meant to address the regulatory concerns that have kept many traditional banks from adopting public blockchains.
This isn't a small test. The initiative has been running in various forms for years, and the launch today signals that the banks are ready to put real assets on the network. For European capital markets, a shared, regulated blockchain could reduce settlement times, cut costs, and open the door to new products like fractional ownership of bonds. It also puts the consortium in direct competition with other institutional blockchain projects, such as the Canton Network in the U.S. and the JPMorgan-led Onyx.
The group said RL1 will begin onboarding additional financial institutions and start processing live transactions in the coming months. The first use cases are expected to be in debt capital markets, with tokenized bonds and commercial paper. The network's governance model will be tested as more members join and the consortium decides how to handle upgrades and disputes. For now, the banks are focused on proving that a regulated layer one can work at scale.
