Project Agorá
artifactMoney & Finance · Nations & Geopolitics · Crypto & Digital ID
After Western officials worried a cross-border payment network could help Russia and Iran dodge sanctions, the central-bank world built a sanctions-only replacement.
Who they are
Project Agorá, a BIS-coordinated cross-border settlement project (from Report #124).
What they do
The engine treats it as the successor to the earlier mBridge system, rebuilt to include only sanctions-compliant central banks.
How it works
After the BIS handed mBridge to its partners in October 2024, Agorá was set up as a tokenized wholesale cross-border settlement marketplace made up exclusively of sanctions-compliant central banks — the pivot after Western BIS members worried mBridge's ledger could be copied by Russia or Iran to bypass SWIFT.
Why it matters
The engine reads it as another 'announcement-vs-substrate' case: the link is documented, but it deliberately holds open who coordinates it.
The engine's record — word for word
[Report #124] The BIS-coordinated successor to mBridge after the BIS handed mBridge to its partners (Oct 2024). A tokenized wholesale cross-border settlement marketplace composed exclusively of SANCTIONS-COMPLIANT central banks — the documented pivot after Western BIS members raised concern that mBridge's distributed ledger could be cloned by Russia/Iran to bypass SWIFT. Substrate-vs-Announcement (#79); link live, coordinator held.
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