The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) unveiled Project Tourbillon. As part of the project, experts developed two concepts based on the eCash project — EC1 and EC2. Both products aim to address crucial issues in the retail CBDC sector, namely, confidentiality and cybersecurity.
According to the bank's report, EC1 offers the same level of anonymity as cash. For example, when paying for services with digital currency, the buyer retains full confidentiality.
The seller's information, on the other hand, will only be known to the bank. Meanwhile, regulators can monitor the overall circulation of CBDC but do not have access to the payment information of individual participants. However, this concept does not rule out the need for Know Your Customer (KYC) verification.
EC2 is dedicated to researching quantum-secure "blind" signatures. The work on this concept showed that implementing such cryptographic protection in retail CBDC is possible but would require significant resources and complicate transaction processing.