A new report from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) emphasizes that public blockchain networks, such as Ethereum, pose new risks to banks’ operations that should be assessed and taken into account.
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (BCBS), established by the G10 central bank governors and coordinated by the BIS, released a working paper in which analysts explored the potential threats posed by the use of public DLT networks by traditional financial institutions and suggested possible ways to mitigate them.
The paper examined various aspects of using permissionless blockchains, such as Ethereum, for financial transactions. In particular, analysts described governance and compliance risks, emphasizing that they arise from the dependence of blockchain operations on unknown third parties, making it difficult for banks to conduct proper due diligence and controls.
To mitigate the identified risks, the BCBS analysts suggested, among other things, to:
- ensure business continuity planning (BCP) by using an additional database, such as an off-chain registry, that would recover ownership in the event of a network or hard fork outage;
- develop technology-based control over transactions;
- designate a dedicated oversight authority that could restrict access to assets and block and cancel suspicious transactions;
- create privacy-preserving identity verification tools based on zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technologies.
The authors of the report also highlighted that the proposed solutions won’t be able to fully ensure the security of the banking industry’s touchpoints with the cryptocurrency market. They also expressed hope that further developments could lead to the emergence of new technologies that will be useful in the context of interaction between the banking industry and the Web3 ecosystem.
At the end of 2023, the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision expanded the requirements for traditional financial institutions, requiring banks to disclose all information related to digital assets. The BIS also began working on a monitoring system for crypto payments, and the general manager of the BIS sees unified ledger technology as the basis of the financial system of the future.
