- Summary:
- The UK government has awarded blockchain company, Millicent, the UK Research, and Innovation Innovate UK Smart Award. What does it mean?
British distributed ledger company, Millicent has been awarded the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Innovate UK SMART Award. The award means that the company will access government resource to support its research and development in digital finance technology. Harvard-educated Wall Street veteran Stella Dyer heads the Millicent project.
Millicent becomes the first private project funded by the British government in the hybrid blockchain segment. Consequently, the company will work with the UK government towards developing regulation-compliant stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). The project is geared toward creating solutions that could radically transform the global financial system.
The road to a transformative financial efficiency
Essentially, Millicent has been developing the technology that synchronizes the benefits of privately-issued stablecoins and CBDCs. It seeks to break down the existing barriers in global financial system. Ultimately, the aim is to enhance efficiency by reducing the cost of transactions and increasing transaction speed. For instance, Millicent’s network will be capable of facilitating tens of thousands of transactions per second. Additionally, the project will develop solutions to enhance access to financial services for approximately 1.7 billion marginalized and unbanked people.
Millicent CEO, Stella Dyer, pointed out that low-income earners pay disproportionately high transaction fees. She added that the project would create a solution to promote equity in access to financial services.
Millicent is designed to level the playing field for everyone, creating an ‘Internet of Value’ that is open and accessible to all.”
Millicent CEO, Stella Dyer
The company is developing technologies that will defragment global financial services reduce or eliminate overdependence on intermediaries. In addition, it will integrate smart contract capabilities into mainstream financial services. While blockchain has been around for quite a while, it has faced bottlenecks in the mainstream financial system. Evidently, many financial institutions have been slow to integrate blockchain technology in their transactions.
Millicent hopes to promote blockchain adoption by working with the UK government to harness the efficiency of blockchain. The project will employ regulation-compliant stablecoins and a CBDC issued by the Bank of England. Also, successful implementation of the project on Britain, backed by the government, would promote its adoption in other countries. Furthermore, the project has come at an opportune time. Notably, many central banks around the world are working on developing their CBDCs. Millicent’s network will be highly scalable, adaptable and built with interoperability in mind.
About Millicent
Millicent is a British company that specializes in the development of distributed ledger technology. It seeks to build an integrated digital finance ecosystem, offering universally-applicable solutions to inefficiencies in global financial systems.
To accomplish its mission, Millicent will employ a hybrid of distributed ledger technology. It intends to change the world’s antiquated financial system into a transparent, borderless and integrated digital network. It is doing this by combining Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG) performance with blockchain capabilities.