RBA and DFCRC Publish Project Acacia Final Report, Announce Tokenization Sandbox

The Reserve Bank of Australia published its Project Acacia final report on 18 May 2026, concluding a multi-month wholesale tokenised asset research program and announcing plans to develop a regulatory sandbox for digital financial market infrastructure. The report marks the formal close of a program in which industry participants developed and tested 20 wholesale tokenised asset market use cases spanning a range of asset classes.

The RBA and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre led the project in collaboration with industry participants, with ASIC, APRA, and the Australian Treasury providing regulatory support. The Industry Advisory Group held its eleventh and final meeting on 31 March 2026, at which point all pilot and proof-of-concept use cases had been completed.

The program drew on 24 use cases selected from organisations ranging from local fintechs to major banks, comprising 19 pilot use cases involving real money and real asset transactions and 5 proof-of-concept use cases involving simulated transactions. Pilot wholesale CBDC issuance for testing ran across a range of private and public-permissioned DLT platforms, including Hedera, Redbelly Network, R3 Corda, Canvas Connect, and other EVM-compatible networks. Asset classes covered included fixed income, private markets, trade receivables, and carbon credits, with the DFCRC project page confirming that participants also tested government and corporate bonds, term deposits, investment funds, trade payables, and mining royalties.

The final report identifies the exploration of a new regulatory sandbox for digital financial market infrastructure as a key element of the program's next phase, with the stated aim of providing industry a more structured pathway from experimentation to commercialisation. The project sits within the Australian Government's March 2025 Statement on Developing an Innovative Australian Digital Asset Industry, which identified it as one of the initiatives supporting the country's digital asset policy agenda.

RBA Assistant Governor Brad Jones articulated the central bank's position publicly in a speech in Sydney on 25 March 2026, stating that Project Acacia had convinced policymakers that tokenised assets, when paired with better market infrastructure and payments upgrades, could improve efficiency, reduce risk, and support wholesale markets more broadly. Jones also cited DFCRC analysis estimating that tokenisation could deliver approximately AUD 24 billion a year in efficiency gains for the Australian economy.

The final report does not specify which organisations will participate in the sandbox, the timeline for its formal establishment, or the precise regulatory relief instruments ASIC intends to apply within it. The report also does not identify a live commercial product, a launched tokenised real estate instrument, or a confirmed mandate from any fund manager or custodian to deploy tokenised assets at scale under the new framework. The sandbox itself remains at the exploration stage as of the report's publication date.

What the 18 May publication concretely establishes is a completed evidence base from 20 tested use cases and a stated regulatory intent to build structured infrastructure for scaling wholesale tokenised asset markets in Australia. It does not establish a functioning sandbox, a licensed digital financial market infrastructure operator, or a committed capital deployment from any named institution