Brazilian central bank digital currency Drex will abandon blockchain technology in order to launch in 2026

According to local media reports cited by News.bitcoin, Brazil's central bank digital currency (CBDC) Drex will abandon most tokenization and blockchain technology and plans to launch it in 2026. Fabio Araujo, coordinator of the Drex project at the central bank, confirmed this change and stated that the new plan will be implemented in two phases: the first phase will not include decentralized elements and is expected to be launched next year; The second phase will continue to implement and improve blockchain technology. Due to the lack of programmability in the underlying architecture, implementing centralized DREX means that many of the test cases tested in the two phases of the pilot will not be implemented. In addition, it is unknown whether the project can continue to use Hyperledger Besu. Hyperledger Besu is an open-source, Ethereum compatible blockchain platform solution that was selected as Drex's development platform as early as 2023.