SWIFT — the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication — is set to develop its recently announced blockchain payment settlement platform on Ethereum layer 2 Linea, as confirmed by Consensys CEO Joe Lubin.
On Monday, SWIFT disclosed its collaboration with Consensys and over 30 TradFi institutions to create infrastructure for a 24/7 real-time crypto payments system, yet did not specify which chain it would utilize despite widespread speculation regarding Linea.
Lubin verified Linea’s selection during a fireside chat with Cointelegraph’s Gareth Jenkinson at the TOKEN2049 conference in Singapore on Thursday.
Lubin noted that during SWIFT’s announcement to the banking sector, SWIFT CEO Javier Pérez-Tasso refrained from mentioning Linea by name. He explained that SWIFT needed to “soft roll out” the “big news,” which was received positively.
“I believe the sentiment was, ‘thank you for doing this.’ It’s about time to bring the two streams, DeFi and TradFi, together,” Lubin commented.
Developed by Consensys, Linea is a scaling-oriented layer 2 that employs zk-EVM rollup technology to process approximately 1.5 transactions per second at just one-fifteenth of Ethereum’s fee costs.
It boasts a total value locked of $2.27 billion, making it the fourth largest among Ethereum layer 2s, following Arbitrum One, Base Chain, and OP Mainnet, as shown by L2BEAT data.
SWIFT’s foray into the blockchain payments realm could be monumental, as it processes around $150 trillion in global payments through traditional banking channels each year.
Some of the biggest banks are involved
Participating in trials of SWIFT’s new blockchain payments rail on Linea are major TradFi firms such as Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, and Toronto-Dominion Bank.
This initiative might present serious competition to Ripple’s XRP Ledger, one of the few significant blockchain-based payment systems designed for banks.
SWIFT’s decision to establish a blockchain payments rail has been anticipated for some time, capitalizing on the blockchain’s near-instant, 24/7 settlement without intermediaries, while minimizing costs, errors, and delays.
Linea could enable a “user-generated civilization,” says Lubin
Lubin emphasized Linea’s broader potential beyond payments, characterizing it as a platform conducive to “user-generated content.”
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“We will have user-generated civilization and user-generated content on Linea and other places,” Lubin stated, explaining that by leveraging Ethereum’s trustless settlement layer, Linea empowers communities to establish infrastructure, rules, and applications from the ground up — a contrast to the top-down structure typical in traditional governance and banking systems.
Decentralized autonomous organizations are currently seeking to operate without centralized leadership, often utilizing smart contracts and decentralized voting mechanisms to manage resources and make collective decisions. However, few DAOs have achieved substantial success thus far.
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