European Banking Heavyweights Launch Joint Blockchain Cooperative RL1 in Luxembourg
Ten major financial institutions form a shared cooperative network to standardize tokenized bond issuance, collateral management, and settlement across Europe.
Ten major European financial institutions have established a joint blockchain cooperative in Luxembourg aimed at unifying the fragmented landscape of institutional distributed ledger technology.
Operating as a European Cooperative Society, the entity—named Regulated Layer One (RL1)—has begun operations with equal governance rights distributed across its founding members. The initial consortium comprises ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis CIB, SC Ventures, and Seturion.
The move addresses a recurring challenge in wholesale capital markets: the proliferation of isolated, bank-specific private blockchains that hinder liquidity and cross-border settlement. By uniting behind a shared permissioned infrastructure, RL1 aims to provide a common layer for tokenized bonds, commercial money, collateral management, and automated clearing across European capital markets, aligning with broader regional initiatives under the European Union’s regulatory framework for distributed ledger technology.
Rather than building a core architecture from scratch, RL1 inherits its technological foundation from SWIAT (Secure Worldwide Interbank Asset Transfer), a German fintech firm. Ownership of SWIAT’s underlying platform has been formally transferred to the cooperative. Over a three-year production phase, the SWIAT architecture processed more than 50 transactions with a combined volume exceeding €700 million ($808 million).
Governance of the entity is structured to ensure parity among participants, preventing any single institution from dominating network standards or protocols. Former SWIAT Managing Director Henning Vollbehr has been appointed to lead the cooperative.
The cooperative structure also integrates public sector development institutions, with German state-backed lenders KfW and L-Bank continuing to support the ecosystem. RL1 is currently holding discussions to onboard additional international banks, including UK-headquartered NatWest.
