The Bank for International Settlements, the institution that coordinates monetary policy among the world’s central banks, just published a working paper that uses the XRP Ledger to verify the authenticity of official statistics. Working Paper No. 1374, released on September 2, describes a proof-of-concept system that anchors cryptographic fingerprints of economic datasets on XRPL, letting anyone independently confirm that published data hasn’t been tampered with.
What the BIS actually built
The current standard for exchanging official statistics between institutions is called SDMX, or Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange. It works fine for moving data around, but it has a blind spot: there’s no built-in cryptographic mechanism to verify that the data you received is the same data that was originally published, or that the publisher is who they claim to be.
The BIS prototype fills that gap. When a statistical dataset is published, the system generates a SHA3-512 hash of the data, organizes these hashes into a Merkle tree structure, and then anchors the resulting fingerprint on the XRP Ledger. It also creates a W3C Verifiable Credential for each dataset, which handles publisher authentication.
The result is a system where verification requires just one ledger lookup and a simple file. Under controlled conditions, the prototype recorded a median publication latency of 3 to 5 seconds and a verification latency of 1 to 2 seconds. The per-transaction cost, thanks to efficient data batching, comes out to roughly $0.000003.
Why the XRP Ledger
The paper’s authors, including Mario Rusev and four staff members from the BIS Monetary and Economic Department, were explicit about why they chose XRPL over other blockchains. Two factors dominated the decision: low transaction fees and rapid consensus finality.
The researchers also noted that the underlying approach isn’t locked to XRPL. The architecture could be adapted to other ledgers or extended to verify different data formats like XBRL, which is the standard used for financial reporting by publicly traded companies.
The BIS included clear language that the research is experimental. It does not represent a commitment to production implementation. It is not an official endorsement of the XRP Ledger by the BIS. The prototype itself is described as unmaintained, sitting within a broader experimental framework.
The bigger picture for data integrity
The system doesn’t put actual statistical data on-chain. It only anchors hashes, which are cryptographic fingerprints that reveal nothing about the underlying information. You can verify that data hasn’t changed without being able to reconstruct what the data says.