Marshall Islands to leverage Algorand and launch it’s own digital currency

SFB Technologies will be partnering with Algorand blockchain to provide the infrastructure for the world’s first national digital currency, the Marshallese sovereign (SOV). SOV aims to help the Marshall Islands efficiently operate in the global economy by circulating alongside the US dollar. The government of the Marshall Islands will oversee SOV and its supply will grow at a fixed rate of 4% each year to keep inflation in check. The currency will be introduced through a pre-sale, and the rights to any future SOV will be sold in a series of auctions as part of a time-release monetary issuance (TRMI). These auctions are expected to begin later this year.

Silvio Micali, the founder of Algorand, praised Marshall Island for embracing SOV:

“The Marshall Island’s vision for global participation and inclusion in an open financial system by harnessing the benefits of blockchain technology is aligned with a truly global and decentralized society that we believe is made possible with our technology. We are proud to support the country on its groundbreaking journey towards mainstream digital currency adoption.”

What is SFB Technologies?

SFB Technologies is a company that develops blockchain infrastructure. This infra is required to make sure that digital currencies fulfill mainstream regulatory compliance. SFB has expertise in creating sovereign money by combining the best features of corporate, government, and digital currencies.

Why choose Algorand?

Algorand is a one-of-a-kind pure proof-of-stake blockchain protocol that allows developers to create scalable blockchain-native solutions for real-world use cases. SFB Technologies chose the Algorand protocol for its speed, scalability, and security. They feel that Algorand’s protocol will help them to implement two of the most essential features required of a national digital currency:

• Compliance controls.
• Transaction finality.

Jim Wagner, co-founder and CTO of SFB Technologies, said about their collaboration with Algorand:

“Algorand was selected after extensive market research among the leading protocol options. The company has already powered several mainstream use cases and thanks to its unique features the platform has the functionality required to issue, manage and distribute the SOV on a global level. This partnership ensures that the SOV will be built on a scalable and secure platform.”

Conclusion

Algorand’s scalable ecosystem has attracted a lot of attention from both institutes and international governments. Algorand had previously partnered up with the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers (SIAE) to create a new platform for decentralized copyright management.

Kenneth Kedi, Speaker of the Marshallese Parliament, had this to say about SOV and the Algorand partnership:

“I am excited about the technological partnership with Algorand. With it, a strong alliance is forming to develop the SOV project. This is another milestone towards developing the Marshall Islands financial services industry.”