Regulated Layer One (RL1), a blockchain network created by 10 financial institutions to develop shared DLT infrastructure for regulated markets, began operations in Europe.
The pan-European Regulated Layer One initiative, which focuses on the regulated financial sector, announced the start of operations and the establishment of a European Cooperative Society (SCE) to govern the ecosystem.
RL1 was founded by 10 European financial institutions:
- ABN AMRO;
- Cecabank;
- Chartered Investment;
- Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale;
- DekaBank;
- DZ BANK;
- LBBW;
- Natixis CIB;
- SC Ventures;
- Seturion.
German state-owned banks KfW and L-Bank also participate in the project. RL1 is also in talks with several other European banks about joining the initiative, including U.K. lender NatWest.
RL1 is registered in Luxembourg as a European Cooperative Society and is positioned as open infrastructure for regulated financial institutions in Europe and other regions. The initiative’s main objective is to establish a common industry standard for institutional tokenization and digital financial asset transactions.
RL1 is a private, permissioned DLT network. Its cooperative model gives all members equal decision-making rights, provides for joint governance of the infrastructure, and prevents any single network operator from exercising dominant control.
RL1 is built on SWIAT’s blockchain platform, ownership of which was transferred to the SCE cooperative. The network has operated for 3 years and processed more than 50 transactions with a combined value exceeding €700 million. SWIAT’s software is fully compatible with the new infrastructure, allowing use cases such as bond tokenization to be deployed immediately.
Applications within the SWIAT ecosystem, including active electronic securities registry services licensed by Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, or BaFin, remained under the company’s ownership and will continue operating on the RL1 infrastructure.
Henning Vollbehr, who previously headed FinTech company SWIAT, was appointed managing director of the new organization. He said RL1 should serve as the connecting infrastructure for Europe’s digital financial market, allowing participants to move from fragmented tokenization projects to a scalable capital markets ecosystem with shared liquidity.
Demand for common DLT platforms is increasing as the market moves from pilot projects toward broader tokenization adoption. European Central Bank initiatives, digital bonds, tokenized securities, stablecoins, tokenized money market funds, tokenized deposits, and settlement platforms all require shared infrastructure that can reduce market fragmentation and support interoperability among regulated financial institutions.
