The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has wrapped up its inaugural central bank digital currency (CBDC) hackathon, featuring ten teams developing eCedi solutions deployed on Hedera’s public distributed ledger technology (DLT) using EMTECH’s Beyond Cash digital currency solution. KPMG collaborated as a service provider on a pro bono basis, establishing competition criteria and overseeing the event, which drew participation from developers, banks, and fintechs.
The winning team, Forward Titans, claimed the top prize of eCedi 500,000 ($41,500), while second and third place went to Nokofio and Pay Code, receiving eCedi 300,000 ($25,000) and 200,000 ($16,600) respectively. Although the specific use cases of the winning teams were not disclosed, the ten finalists presented applications spanning agriculture, government payments, business payments, taxation, securities, crowdfunding, interoperability, and credit scoring.
The hackathon, initiated in October with 88 applications, was narrowed down to 68 and ultimately featured ten finalists. Dr. Ernest Addison, Governor of the Bank of Ghana, commended the collaborative efforts across countries and continents, emphasizing that Ghana’s eCedi project aims to enhance financial inclusion, improve payment safety and efficiency, and advance digitalization.
CBDC technology provider EMTECH revealed that participants had access to BYDC-eCedi APIs for seamless integration, with all transactions adhering to the ERC-20 token standard. While transactions were transparent on the public DLT, user information remained confidential.
EMTECH’s CEO, Carmelle Cadet, praised the Bank of Ghana’s foresight and leadership in its successful pilot with their web3-enabled technology stack. She highlighted that it establishes a blueprint for “How To CBDC for the Web3 era” while fostering collaboration with banks and fintech ecosystems.
In 2021, the Bank of Ghana engaged Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) Currency Technology to develop a pilot for its retail CBDC, including offline CBDC trials conducted in 2022. It remains unclear whether EMTECH’s offering integrates with G+D’s or operates independently, as responses from involved parties were not received at the time of inquiry.
EMTECH CEO Carmelle Cadet clarified that after collaborating with G+D for offline CBDC, the Bank of Ghana continued its exploration by testing web3 components and various cases within its ecosystem through a hackathon approach with EMTECH. The intention is to support various offline integrations and collaborate with other entities to determine the most suitable solution for Ghana, as ultimately decided by the Bank of Ghana.
While it remains uncommon for CBDC trials to leverage public blockchains, the Ghanaian hackathon represents a notable instance of such experimentation, aligning with global developments in central bank digital currency exploration.
