One of Australia’s four major banks, the National Australian Bank, has quietly halted development of its Ethereum-based stablecoin project, AUDN, citing the departure of the development team.
The founding group of the bank, which included a longstanding NAB representative, quit to launch a separate Australian dollar stablecoin, according to reports from Australian Financial Reviews.
The stablecoin, Ubiquity, is backed by Animoca Brands, Concave, Merit Circle, and the Australian blockchain company CloudTech Group, among others. In addition to this, the Ubiquity team will also cooperate with another Australian bank, ANZ Bank, to create an Australian stablecoin called A$DC.
NAB launched the AUDN project in late 2022 to become the second financial institution in Australia to introduce a stablecoin on the Ethereum and Algorand blockchains.
The bank planned to allow users to settle real-time AUDN transactions on a blockchain using Australian dollars. It was also anticipated that the stablecoin would help with several applications, such as “repurchase agreements, international money transfers, and carbon credit trading.”
NAB recently ended a project due to a lack of customer demand, although it is continuing to develop an institutional crypto custody offering. One of the project’s aims was the settlement of tokenized carbon credits.
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