Rostec announced the replacement of SWIFT on the blockchain

RT-Techpriemka, controlled by the state corporation Rostec, has developed a distributed ledger technology that is claimed to be able to replace the international banking system SWIFT. This was reported on the official website of the corporation.

An industrial blockchain platform called CELLS was developed by the Novosibirsk Institute of Software Systems. It is argued that on the basis of the site it is possible to create an ecosystem of software products. However, the key task of CELLS seems to be to become an alternative to SWIFT.

“The multifunctional system provides international payments, multi-currency transactions, user identification and storage of digital currency,” the website reports.

Rostec Executive Director Oleg Yevtushenko said that the development will provide clearing participants with “the independence of national financial policy.” It is also reported that on the basis of the platform have already begun to develop services of the “digital passport”, systems of “digital housing and communal services” and other solutions.

Contrary to Rostec’s emphasis on blockchain technology, the development will still be censored. The state corporation directly says this in its announcement:

“The platform provides […] storage and transmission of large multimedia files in a protected format in accordance with the legislative requirements of the Russian Federation”.

How exactly CELLS will oversee compliance with Russian law is not disclosed. At the same time, Rostec assures that the site is able to support up to 100,000 transactions per second, but it is unclear on which kind of consensus algorithm the project works.

Plans to replace SWIFT in Russia have been nurtured for a long time. For example, in mid-April, St. Petersburg State University (SPbU) began work on creating a “decentralized international system” of interbank financial messages using “blockchain technologies.”

At the same time, St Petersburg University admits that alternatives to SWIFT have already been created by the Central Banks of various countries, including Russia and China. However, according to the university, none of these systems “solves the issue of trust in it of all participants.” What kind of technology stack they intend to use in the development of a “decentralized” alternative to SWIFT, St Petersburg University did not specify.

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