ECB sketches three ways to put central bank money on a blockchain

The European Central Bank is weighing three distinct designs for putting central bank money on distributed-ledger (DLT) rails, Executive Board member Isabel Schnabel told the Bank of England's Future of Money conference in London on Thursday, according to The Block, which reviewed her presentation.

The three models, per Schnabel's slides:

• Direct issuance — the central bank issues reserves directly on a programmable platform.
• Interoperability link — the ECB's existing real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system stays in place, connected to DLT platforms by an interoperability layer. Reserves themselves are not tokenized; the two systems are linked "by hash."
• Tokenized reserves — reserves held at the central bank are tokenized, and settlement tokens fully backed by those reserves are issued. Crucially, those tokens would be private claims, not claims issued directly by the central bank.

Schnabel stressed that any on-chain system would keep today's two-tier structure: central bank money at the core of settlement, commercial banks still providing services to customers. In that setup, central bank money would sit on DLT alongside tokenized securities, deposits, and stablecoins. She framed the benefit as programmability and "atomic" settlement — moving an asset and its payment together.

This is not purely theoretical. The ECB's Pontes project launched last month to provide tokenized central bank money for DLT transactions, while its Appia project is studying market architectures — weighing a unified ledger, interconnected networks, or multiple shared ledgers, per The Block.

Alongside the ECB news, The Block cited Lloyds' 10th annual Financial Institutions Sentiment Survey, which found 71% of senior decision-makers at large UK institutions expect tokenization to reshape financial services, with 60% citing faster settlement as the top benefit.

Key facts

• Three models presented: direct reserve issuance; RTGS-to-DLT interoperability via hash link; tokenized reserves backed by privately issued settlement tokens. (Schnabel presentation, via The Block)
• Setting: BoE Future of Money conference, London, Thursday (Oct. 2, 2026). (The Block)
• Pontes launched last month to supply tokenized central bank money; Appia is studying ledger architectures. (The Block)
• Lloyds survey: 71% expect tokenization to reshape finance; 60% cite faster settlement. (Lloyds, shared with The Block)

The real-world read

This is a framework and a set of pilots, not a decision — Schnabel presented options, and the ECB has not committed to one. The third model deserves the closest read: "tokenized reserves" would be issued as private claims, not direct central bank liabilities, which is a meaningfully different risk profile from the first model despite the shared "central bank money on-chain" banner. The two-tier insistence is also a tell — the ECB wants innovation without disintermediating commercial banks.

On the Lloyds number: it's a bank's own sentiment survey, released by an institution that sells markets services and stands to benefit from tokenization adoption. The 71% figure is a directional data point from an interested party, not independent evidence that tokenization will reshape anything. Treat it as such.

Opinion, and whose

Schnabel argued tokenization makes transactions more programmable and atomic, letting asset and payment settle together — a benefit, not a settled outcome. Lloyds' Rob Hale, co-head of global markets, called the "real opportunity" faster settlement, better collateral use, and improved liquidity movement; that's a vendor's framing of upside.

Sources

• The Block (reputable secondary; Oct. 2, 2026) — reported Schnabel's conference remarks and reviewed her presentation; primary source for the three models, two-tier structure, and Pontes/Appia detail. Her slides themselves (the primary document) were not independently published.
• Lloyds Financial Institutions Sentiment Survey (10th annual), shared with The Block — source of the 71% and 60% figures. This is an interested party's own survey and is treated as marketing-adjacent, not independent data.

This is news reporting, not financial advice.