ECB Pontes Goes Live with Four DLT Operators, One on XRPL

The European Central Bank's (ECB) wholesale settlement bridge, Pontes, has gone live on September 21, marking a significant milestone in the adoption of distributed ledger technology (DLT). The system connects four market operators from day one, with Axiology being one of them. Axiology runs infrastructure derived from XRP Ledger technology, which is confirmed by the ECB's own 2024 wholesale trial annexes.

The Pontes settlement bridge allows for the transfer of euro central bank money between participants, using a tokenized trigger to facilitate delivery-versus-payment via Hash-Link. This setup does not involve the public XRP token, but rather a private version of XRPL's code in a controlled perimeter.

Axiology is one of four operators connected to Pontes from day one, with Clearstream, SWIAT, and Cashlink being the others. The ECB has confirmed that it wants longer hours in 2027 and 24/7 multi-currency settlement by mid-2028. ECB board member Isabel Schnabel argued last month that on-chain central-bank money is no longer optional for euro sovereignty.

Pontes charges EUR 2,500 per participant and EUR 15,000 per operator at launch, with no per-trade fee to start. The settlement window runs roughly 09:00 to 16:00 CET on TARGET business days. The ECB's answer to the need for on-chain central-bank money is Pontes, which has now stopped being a pilot.

The next things to watch are the other three operators' tech stacks, the 2027 hour extensions, and the 2028 multi-currency target. It remains to be seen whether any move will put the public XRP token inside the cash flow in Pontes.