Ten European financial institutions have launched the joint blockchain association Regulated Layer One (RL1), created to work with regulated markets and tokenized assets. On July 28, 2026, the group announced that RL1 is registered as a European Cooperative Society in Luxembourg and has already begun operational activities.
Among the founders are ABN AMRO, Cecabank, Chartered Investment, Crédit Mutuel Alliance Fédérale, DekaBank, DZ $BANK, LBBW, Natixis Corporate and Investment Banking, SC Ventures (a division of Standard Chartered) and Seturion (a project of Börse Stuttgart Group). RL1 clarified that each participant has equal rights in making decisions regarding the network's governance and development.
Infrastructure Based on SWIAT
The private permissioned network is built on technology from the German fintech company Secure Worldwide Interbank Asset Transfer (SWIAT), which transferred ownership of the development to the association. Previously, SWIAT stated that over three years of operation, its platform processed over 50 transactions totaling more than €700 million (approx. $808 million). The company remains a technological partner of RL1 and the network's software provider.
The association is governed by a General Assembly of all participants, a Supervisory Board, and a Board of Directors, while the technical operation of the network is provided by SWIAT GmbH.
Purpose of the Network
- digital money;
- tokenized bonds;
- collateral for transactions;
- repo and securities lending operations;
- blockchain settlements.
RL1 believes that a shared infrastructure will reduce fragmentation arising from financial institutions using disparate distributed ledgers instead of a unified network.
Leadership of the Project
RL1 will be managed by former SWIAT Managing Director Henning Vollbehr. German development banks KfW and L-Bank will continue to support the initiative. According to the association, discussions are currently underway for other institutions to join the network, including NatWest, which, according to information on the project's website, may become a member in the coming weeks.
The launch of RL1 unites major European banks and financial groups around a unified blockchain infrastructure for regulated assets. SWIAT's experience, accumulated over three years of platform operation, forms the basis of the new associative model for network governance.
The expansion of participants, including the potential addition of NatWest, could influence the further use of the network for trading tokenized assets and settlements between European financial institutions.
AI Opinion
From the perspective of machine data analysis, the article draws attention to the gap between the scale of ambitions and the current volume of operations: the SWIAT platform processed just over 50 transactions worth €700 million over three years of operation — for infrastructure intended to cover repo, tokenized bonds, and settlements among ten major banks, this is more of a pilot load than an industrial flow. A technical aspect left out of the frame is the transition from a private permissioned network with a limited number of validators to a system capable of handling the real volumes of the interbank repo market, where thousands of deals are made daily. The risk here is not so much regulatory as infrastructural: will DZ $BANK, Natixis, ABN AMRO and other participants be able to synchronize their internal settlement systems with a unified protocol as quickly as they signed the founding documents? The answer to this question will determine whether RL1 becomes a working highway for tokenized assets or yet another association whose path from registration to mass adoption will take years.
