Europe's Banks Unite for Regulated Euro Stablecoin on Ethereum
A consortium of 37 European banks is working on launching a regulated Euro stablecoin on the public Ethereum blockchain, according to Ethereum Institutional. The project, named Qivalis, will operate under the European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation (MiCA). The banking initiative has expanded significantly since its founding in September 2025, with the addition of prominent financial institutions such as ING, UniCredit, and KBC.
The chosen infrastructure for technical deployment is the public Ethereum blockchain, which marks a departure from standard banking frameworks that rely on permissioned private distributed ledgers. The organization targets a formal launch during the second half of 2026, featuring a strict 1:1 peg to the eurozone's fiat currency. To proceed with the issuance, the consortium is pursuing an Electronic Money Institution (EMI) license with De Nederlandsche Bank (DNB), the central bank of the Netherlands.
The stablecoin sector remains overwhelmingly dominated by US dollar-pegged assets, with Ethereum Institutional estimating that the dollar's market share stands at approximately 99.5% within a global stablecoin market evaluated at $300 billion as of September 2026. The consortium positions itself as an institutional settlement alternative designed for corporate payments and cross-border interbank clearing denominated in euros.