Max Allan

This week, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre announced the release of the final report for Project Acacia.

The project explored how tokenised assets, digital money and modern settlement infrastructure could fundamentally reshape Australia’s wholesale financial markets.

Project Acacia has achieved world firsts, including the issuance of pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (wCBDC) onto public and private distributed ledger infrastructure.

20 innovative use cases from a diverse range of organisations, ranging from fintechs to major banks, completed experimentation between August 2025 and February 2026, comprising:

• 12 pilot use cases, which involved real money and real asset transactions, and
• 8 proof-of-concept use cases involving simulated transactions.

The use cases involve varied asset classes, including fixed income, managed funds, repos, structured products, private markets, carbon credits and trade payables. Settlement was conducted using a range of methods and forms of public and private digital money, such as stablecoins, tokenised forms of commercial bank deposits, pilot wholesale central bank digital currency (CBDC), and traditional RBA exchange settlement account (ESA) balances.

The experiment operated in parallel with an examination of the key legal and regulatory considerations associated with the issuance of bank deposit tokens in Australia.

Project Acacia highlights the strong and growing interest across industry in the use of tokenisation within Australia’s wholesale financial markets. By streamlining processes and enabling more efficient settlement, tokenisation has the potential to deliver meaningful improvements in market efficiency, resilience and overall functionality.

Mallesons partner Max Allan sat on the Industry Advisory Group for Project Acacia, which provided advice on the project pathway, findings and future research opportunities.

Commenting on the project, Max Allan said: “This project has been a vital initiative to emphasise the opportunities created by new technology solutions to enhance the functionality, resilience, efficiency and stability of financial markets and systems, in Australia and beyond.

“As financial markets, payments and digital assets rapidly evolve, it will be important to maximise the benefits presented by these opportunities and adeptly navigate the challenges. This will require sustained constructive engagement across government, regulators, industry associations and market participants.

“I would like to congratulate the Reserve Bank of Australia, Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre, ASIC, APRA, the Australian Treasury and all participants, including my colleagues on the Industry Advisory Group, for the success of the project. I am delighted, and grateful, to have had the opportunity to contribute to the project.”

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