Central banks, in particular the ECB, are pushing hard to force a CBDC on their citizens - these citizens are not interested in a CBDC that invades their privacy.
Chaumian e-cash
In 1982, David Chaum published “Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments”.
e-Cash
- Ensures privacy
- Is permissionless
- Can be minted / issued by banks
- Can be developed completely in open source code
- Can be supported by a multitude of (open source) wallets - each bank can enable it in their bank app
e-Cash
- Does not enable a holding limit - that is not necessary, as it is not competing with bank accounts - on the contrary: bank client convert a small part of their deposit to ecash, which is non interest bearing
- Does not require KYC - which some may consider a problem - this being said, it is issued only by banks that have performed KYC on their clients
David Chaum worked with the SNB to descibe e-cash in How to issue a central bank digital currency .
Fedimint
The open source Fediminit concept has alread been developed. A fedimint enables "minting" or "issuing" e-cash bearer tokens, that can be handed over between users person to person without transaction fees.
Banks need to urgently issue DINE (Dine Is Not Euro) e-cash, a clear answer to the ECB arguments for a central bank digital euro
Today, banks develop a Euro stablecoin – leveraging conventional technology – an EVM contract.
A simple alternative is available to banks: a fedemint of bank guardians, for minting ecash bearer tokens.
Different than a stablecoin, ecash does not require transaction fees. Also, an offline and P2PK capability has been developed already in open source.
Economically, e-cash is particularly interesting for banks, who can hold the euro value of the minted e-cash in treasury while not having to pay interest - free funding (which cannot beat negative interest funding, we have to recognise - that era is hopefully behind us).
Fast and economic implementation is possible based on open-source technology.
Already built and operational with sats
The digital p2p value transfer protocol, bitcoin, already has an extensive e-Cash ecosystem. Cashu and the OpenCash Association lead this development, which has so far resulted in a broad range of wallets and mints, that mint "satoshi" tokens and even "euro" tokens.
The Fedi initiative has already built an operational fediminit software, readily available for implementation.
That open source software can perfectly serve as blueprint for a reasonable digital euro.