In 1973, a group of banks had a problem: none of them trusted a rival to run the wires between them. So 239 of them built SWIFT and owned it together.

Yesterday, ten European banks did the same thing with blockchain. ABN AMRO, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis and five others launched Regulated Layer One (RL1), a Luxembourg cooperative that takes over SWIAT‘s network: three years of live production, more than 50 transactions, over €700 million ($808 million) settled. The technology already existed. The owners are new, and that’s what caught my eye.

What Happened

On July 28, ten institutions launched RL1 as a European Cooperative Society (SCE) in Luxembourg: ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis CIB, SC Ventures (Standard Chartered’s venture arm), and Seturion (Boerse Stuttgart Group). Every member gets an equal vote.

SWIAT, the blockchain firm DekaBank built and later brought LBBW and SC Ventures into as shareholders, handed its permissioned network over to the cooperative and stays on as technical partner. So RL1 doesn’t start from zero. The rails have issued digital bonds under Germany’s eWpG since 2023. First use cases: tokenized bonds, regulated digital money, and on-chain collateral.

Why It Matters

Nobody makes money on the ledger anymore. Here’s the objection that killed every bank chain so far: nobody wants to settle on a rival’s rails. JPMorgan moved $1.5 trillion through Kinexys and it’s still mostly a JPMorgan loop. Canton had to set up a foundation and seat DTCC and Euroclear just to look neutral. RL1 skips all of that. The banks own the thing outright, every member with the same vote. Which means the base layer stops being a business anyone profits from. So the competition in Europe moves up a level, into issuance, structuring, and custody.