BIS Tests XRP Ledger for Tamper-Resistant Official Statistics

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has tested the XRP Ledger as a tool for making official statistics tamper-resistant. The BIS used blockchain hashes to verify data origin and integrity, anchoring cryptographic fingerprints of datasets directly onto the XRPL rather than storing the data itself on-chain.

This test was part of a proof-of-concept project aimed at addressing a specific gap in SDMX, the standard international organization for exchanging official economic and financial statistics. Researchers generated a cryptographic fingerprint for each dataset using SHA3-512 hashing, grouped multiple fingerprints into a Merkle tree, and anchored the resulting root value on XRPL.

A signed W3C Verifiable Credential identifies the publisher, allowing users to verify authorship and integrity with a single ledger lookup. The prototype showed median publication times of 3 to 5 seconds and verification times of 1 to 2 seconds, according to the paper's own performance measurements.