The Reserve Bank of Australia has completed Project Acacia, a wholesale central bank digital currency pilot involving 19 industry partners and five proofs of concept — testing real money and real assets across fixed income, private market investments, trade receivables, and carbon credits simultaneously.
According to Reuters, participating platforms included Hedera, Redbel, R3 Corda, and Canvas Connect, giving the pilot multi-platform coverage across both permissioned and public blockchain infrastructure. The breadth of asset classes tested — from conventional fixed income to carbon credits — makes Project Acacia one of the more comprehensive wholesale CBDC pilots conducted by a major central bank to date.
The carbon credit component is particularly notable for Blockchain Monitor's coverage — it represents one of the first confirmed central bank-level tests of blockchain-based carbon credit infrastructure, providing regulatory validation for a use case that has been commercially active but institutionally untested at this level.
Project Acacia is a pilot programme not a commercial launch, and the RBA has not announced a timeline for a live wholesale CBDC. Its significance is as a regulatory and infrastructure signal — a major central bank has tested real assets on multiple blockchain platforms and found the exercise sufficiently worthwhile to conduct at scale.