“Regulated Layer One” initiative to start with 10 European financial institutions at launch

• Regulated Layer One is a collective European effort designed to establish the foundation for a common distributed ledger under open and credible governance, enabling regulated market participants to deploy and scale DLT use cases.
• The initiative builds on production-proven SWIAT NET technology and contractual framework initiated by SWIAT.
• A total of ten European financial institutions signed up to support the launch of the European DLT Network Regulated Layer One under the umbrella of a newly established European Cooperative that remains open for more institutions to join.

Frankfurt am Main, 29 September 2025 – 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, its shareholders, and seven further financial institutions announce the launch of the Regulated Layer One (“RL1”) initiative to unite European financial institutions around a shared distributed ledger.

RL1 is designed to be jointly owned, operated, and governed by European financial institutions, ensuring openness, sovereignty, and credible neutrality. The basis for RL1 is the SWIAT DLT network which is in production for more than two years now and which has successfully completed more than 40 transactions with more than EUR 600m volume. This SWIAT DLT network and the corresponding contractual framework optimized for regulatory compliance will transition from SWIAT into a new European cooperative structure which will be owned and controlled by financial institutions.

In line with the vision of the European Savings and Investment Union, RL1 aims to become a pan-European, neutral, and interoperable blockchain for digital assets and payments, serving as a foundational pillar of Europe’s future financial ecosystem. It will be open to a wide range of use cases from native digital assets, tokenized traditional assets, various settlement options and cash-on-chain solutions.

Ten European Financial institutions have now signed up to equally support financially the preparatory work of the RL1 initiative and mandate SWIAT to manage implementation and coordination (alphabetically listed):

• ABN AMRO

• DekaBank

• DZ BANK

• KfW

• LBBW

• Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking

• NatWest

• Seturion (Boerse Stuttgart Group)

• SC Ventures (Standard Chartered Bank)

• V-BANK

The preparatory work for founding the new RL1 European Cooperative will be conducted, defining the governance of RL1 and preparing the transition of the SWIAT DLT network into RL1.

The ownership of the DLT infrastructure will transition from SWIAT to RL1, while SWIAT GmbH will remain as both software supplier and service provider for RL1 to ensure seamless transition and operational support. SWIAT’s software is fully compatible with RL1, enabling immediate implementation of use cases such as bond tokenization. Additionally, RL1 participants will retain the flexibility to develop their own solutions on the platform.

Legally, RL1 is working towards setting up a European Cooperative Society (SCE), with a governance structure that ensures that no single partner or group of developers or node operators exercises undue control over the network. This is the essential prerequisite for the success of RL1.

A key differentiator of RL1 is its focus on building a blockchain layer that enables market participants to deploy and scale specific use cases in a secure, trustworthy, and permissioned DLT environment, governed by the participating institutions.

Moreover, unlike commercial platforms designed for revenue extraction, RL1 is conceived as common infrastructure operated for the benefit of its members. With issuers, investors, infrastructure providers, marketplaces, trading counterparties, and cash solution providers all on one infrastructure sharing a common set of rules, true interoperability can be created.

Dr. Timo Reinschmidt, Co-CEO and CCO of SWIAT, said: “Regulated Layer One is a great example how privately lead initiatives can support the digital transformation towards a unified and shared infrastructure supporting the financial sector. The positive feedback from European private and public sector stakeholders has proven the need for a common DLT infrastructure owned by market participants. With its European cooperative design and its commitment to neutrality, RL1 avoids the pitfalls of siloed or rent-seeking models and instead acts as enabling infrastructure for the benefit of Europe’s financial ecosystem. I am delighted that ten financial institutions have already committed to support the launch of RL1. The journey, though, does not stop there; as we are actively engaged in discussions with additional market participants who have expressed strong interest in joining the initiative.”

Among the European Financial Institutions is Germany's promotional bank KfW, which has been dedicated to the further development of the digital ecosystem for several years. As part of various pilot transactions, KfW has already gained extensive experience with DLT-based financial market transactions and owns important expertise that it will contribute to the further development of RL1.

Stefan Wintels, CEO of KfW, explains:“We are very pleased to be part of the RL1 initiative and to make an important contribution to the further development of the DLT-based capital market. RL1 has the potential to elevate the European DLT infrastructure to a new technological level and to create a unifying framework. In this regard, interoperability is strengthened, crucial for driving scalability of this technology. Through our commitment to RL1, we continue our digital learning journey and will share our experience with other market participants.”

Martin Müller, Member of the Advisory Board of SWIAT and Board Member of DekaBank, said: “The accelerating transformation of Europe’s financial sector, driven by digitalization and regulatory innovation, places unprecedented demands on all industry leaders. In this context, ensuring Europe’s digital sovereignty—while remaining open, competitive, and resilient—requires collective action and visionary industry leadership. Our objective is clear: to position RL1 as a central pillar of the future European financial ecosystem, fully aligned with the ambitions of the ECB’s Appia track and the European Savings and Investment Union. The support of the ten first market participants demonstrates this collaborative leadership and I am convinced that we can secure the support of many more market participants from the private and public sector.”

About SWIAT GmbH

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. By 2025, the SWIAT blockchain platform had onboarded over 40 participants and settled securities worth more than EUR 600 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. https://www.swiat.io/