On July 28, 2026, the official launch of the European Regulated Layer One (RL1) blockchain initiative took place, which is an open, neutral and regulatory-oriented distributed registry network. The project was established in the form of a European cooperative society and unites ten major financial institutions, including ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, DekaBank, DZ BANK, LBBW, Natixis CIB, SC Ventures and Seturion. Henning Folber, who previously headed SWIAT, took over the leadership position in the new structure. The initiative is positioned as a collective effort to create a reliable foundation for a shared distributed ledger under transparent and trustworthy management.

The technological base of the RL1 initiative is the SWIAT platform, which continues to serve as a provider of software and related services for the cooperative. In three years of operation, this network has successfully processed fifty transactions totaling seven hundred million euros. The main strategic goal of RL1 is to overcome the fragmentation of existing networks in the regulated financial sector and create a pan-European infrastructure for tokenized assets, digital currencies and next-generation financial services. At the same time, the network architecture remains open for expansion: active negotiations are currently underway to join the NatWest financial group cooperative.

The launch of RL1 is a direct response to the growing demand in the European Union for scalable solutions in the field of tokenization of real assets. The industry is moving from the stage of isolated pilot projects such as Pontes and Appia to the deployment of a full-fledged production infrastructure in the local market. This transformation is supported by the forecasts of industry analysts, in particular Standard Chartered experts, who expect the combined market capitalization of the decentralized finance and tokenized asset sectors to reach two trillion dollars in the medium term, making the creation of regulated industry standards a critical step.