Ten major European financial institutions have successfully launched a jointly owned blockchain cooperative: “Regulated Layer One – RL1”

RL1 is a permissioned private blockchain network designed for regulated financial markets and tokenized assets. RL1 is marking a major milestone in the development of jointly owned, regulated blockchain infrastructure for digital capital markets.

SWIAT GmbH (“SWIAT”), a German fintech company specialising in the development of blockchain software and a tokenisation platform for an open, decentralised financial market infrastructure, announces the successful launch of the European Blockchain Initiative Regulated Layer One (RL1), Europe’s neutral, collaborative DLT network, which has been specifically developed for regulated financial markets.

RL1, which is organised as a European Cooperative Society (SCE), will be based in Luxembourg and will initially comprise ten European financial institutions. RL1 will be led by Henning Vollbehr, who has been appointed Managing Director of the SCE. Vollbehr has before led SWIAT as Managing Director.

SWIAT has thus reached another milestone: with the successful launch of RL1, the fintech, together with these ten European financial institutions, has successfully completed the spin-off of its DLT network and will now hand over this network to the new, participant-led organisation.

SWIAT has succeeded in attracting further leading financial institutions to RL1: the Spanish Cecabank and the French financial institution Crédit Mutuel are joining the initiative. As a result, RL1 continues to grow and will, at launch, comprise the following institutions: ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking, SC Ventures (Standard Chartered Bank), Seturion (Börse Stuttgart Group).

KfW and L-Bank, which have also been members of the initiative since 2025 and 2026 respectively, will continue to actively support RL1 in its establishment and expansion.

European platform with growth prospects
RL1 is launching with a broad pan-European participant base and plans to onboard further financial institutions in the coming weeks. Concrete discussions are already underway with a number of leading European banks regarding their participation in RL1 – including NatWest, who has been an active participant in the RL1 network during its development phase.

This means that at launch RL1 is already the largest open, neutral, compliance-optimised and collaborative DLT network in the European financial sector. The SCE brings together leading financial institutions to overcome the current fragmentation of blockchain networks within the regulated financial sector and to create a European-based, common, trustbased blockchain network for tokenised assets, digital money and nextgeneration financial markets use cases. All RL1 members benefit from equal decision-making rights, influence over the network’s further development and direct access to a functioning ecosystem at an institutional level.

The institutions participating in RL1 bring a variety of business models to the initiative. This broad pan-European participant base creates, right at launch, an attractive ecosystem for a wide range of institutional use cases in the field of digital assets and tokenised financial market infrastructure.

SWIAT remains key technology partner for RL1
SWIAT will remain RL1’s key technology partner in the future. SWIAT will contribute its technology, products and services to the RL1 ecosystem and offer participants solutions for issuance, custody, collateral management and other digital capital market applications.

SWIAT’s DLT network forms the basis for RL1; it has been in production for three years and has since successfully completed more than 50 transactions with a total volume of more than EUR 700m. SWIAT’s software is fully compatible with RL1, enabling immediate implementation of use cases such as bond tokenization. SWIAT’s existing application ecosystem including
offerings and productive solutions like Bafin-supervised German electronic securities registries will transition seamlessly.

Moreover, the design and operation of RL1 as an open, regulated infrastructure empowers its members to jointly develop and scale their own digital solutions and transparent protocols, thereby establishing the base for common industry standards.

Foundation for scaling
RL1 will create a common European infrastructure that accelerates innovation, promotes interoperability and supports the roll-out of digital solutions in the European institutional financial market. But RL1 not only provides a shared infrastructure, but also a joint governance that overcomes existing market fragmentation due to different DLT networks.

RL1’s DLT network will offer a reliable and long-term solution for financial institutions to offer dlt-based financial services in compliance with ITrequirements for financial institutions As a permissioned, interoperable network, RL1 thus connects assets, services and access points for regulated institutions.

Following the successful launch of the platform, the focus is now on attracting further members to RL1, introducing additional use cases and scaling the network across Europe. Recent months have highlighted the growing need for such a shared infrastructure, as tokenisation has gradually progressed from pilot projects towards a scalable market infrastructure.

The ECB’s initiatives – including Appia and Pontes – as well as stablecoins, tokenised money market funds, digital bonds, smart derivatives, solutions for mobilising collateral and settlement platforms all rely on shared infrastructures that reduce fragmentation and enable reliable and efficient settlement.

Dr. Timo Reinschmidt, CEO and CCO SWIAT, said: “I am delighted to see so many leading financial institutions supporting the RL1 initiative. This strong commitment demonstrates the growing conviction across the industry that a shared, regulated digital market infrastructure is essential to unlocking the full potential of digital assets. RL1 is the result of a collective effort and builds
on the foundations that have been established over the past several years.

It is exciting to see this vision becoming a reality and to witness the industry coming together to create an open, interoperable, and scalable infrastructure for Europe’s digital capital markets. I would like to thank all participating institutions for their trust, commitment, and collaboration. I am convinced that RL1 will play an important role in accelerating the transition from isolated tokenization initiatives to a truly integrated and liquid digital financial market ecosystem.“

Henning Vollbehr, designated Managing Director of RL1, added: “I am delighted that the participating financial institutions have placed their trust in me and appointed me as Managing Director of the RL1 SCE. RL1 is the result of our collective work and the evolution of SWIAT, which I have had the privilege of helping to shape over the past four years. Against this backdrop,
I am very pleased to now be able to drive forward the digital transformation towards a unified financial market infrastructure at an institutional level as well. Going forward, RL1 will serve as the connecting infrastructure for Europe’s digital financial market, enabling participating institutions to move from isolated tokenization initiatives to an integrated, liquid, and scalable capital market ecosystem. I am excited about this opportunity and look forward to the task ahead.”

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SWIAT GmbH is a 2022 founded Frankfurt-based fintech that develops blockchain-software. By the same token it is a tokenization platform for an open decentralised financial market infrastructure. In addition, SWIAT operates a regulated registry services under the German Electronic Securities Act (eWpG) for digital securities. By 2025, the SWIAT blockchain
platform had onboarded over 50 participants and settled securities worth more than EUR 700 million, becoming the leading blockchain ecosystem designed to meet capital market, compliance and regulatory requirements.

Developed for banks and financial institutions, the SWIAT platform enables the issuance of regulated digital assets with a high level of security and regulatory compliance. As an open platform, SWIAT aims to create a global ecosystem for the settlement and trading of digital assets that ensures efficiency, security and interoperability across all market participants. SWIAT shareholders are DekaBank, LBBW, SC Ventures (Standard Chartered Bank) and the fintech Comyno.