The Marshallese sovereign (SOV), the national digital currency of the Marshall Islands, will be built using the Blockchain of Algorand.
According to Monday's announcement, SFB Technologies, the appointed organizer for the Marshallese sovereign initiative, chose the Algorand protocol for its speed, Scalability , and security.
The company is also bullish on Algorand's ability to effectively implement required compliance controls and the transaction finality needed for a national currency.
"Algorand was selected after extensive market research among the leading protocol options," Jim Wagner, co-founder and CTO of SFB Technologies, said. "The company has already powered several mainstream use cases and thanks to its unique features the platform has the functionality required to issue, manage and distribute the SOV on a global level. This partnership ensures that the SOV will be built on a scalable and secure platform."
A nation-backed digital currency
The Marshall Islands first revealed its plans to develop a digital currency last September and will circulate it alongside the US dollar.
SFB Technologies was then hired to build the necessary blockchain infrastructure for the digital currency.
As detailed earlier, the island-nation has capped the SOV supply at 24 million tokens in order to prevent inflation along with a 4 percent algorithmic annual growth. Forty percent of the total supply will be made available globally for investment.
"The Marshall Island's vision for global participation and inclusion in an open financial system by harnessing the benefits of blockchain technology is aligned with a truly global and decentralized society that we believe is made possible with our technology," Silvio Micali, founder of Algorand, said.
Along with the Marshall Islands, the British Virgin Islands is also developing a USD-pegged digital currency.
"I am excited about the technological partnership with Algorand. With it, a strong alliance is forming to develop the SOV project. This is another milestone towards developing the Marshall Islands financial services industry," Kenneth Kedi, speaker of the Marshallese Parliament, added.
