Millicent Acquires UK Government Funding, Boosts Network’s Technology

British distributed ledger company Millicent acquired the UK’s most competitive and prestigious R&D grant. In detail, this will enable the company to receive funding from the government in the form of a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Innovate UK SMART Award. The funding will be used to continue the development of the company’s digital finance network. 

As per reports received by CoinQuora, Millicent is the first stablecoin and Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) project funded by the British government. Meanwhile, It also signals the interest of the UK in the mainstream issuance and acceptance of privately issued stablecoins and hybrid public-private CBDCs.

The company is led by its CEO Stella Dyer, a Harvard Business School alum and Wall Street veteran. As per the CEO, Millicent is using a next-generation hybrid distributed ledger technology—combining Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) speeds with blockchain’s structure—to transform the world’s outdated financial system into an open, borderless and interconnected digital network, underpinned by a suite of regulation-compliant stablecoins.

 Assessors from Innovate UK explained,

Millicent is a game-changing project that could change the way we bank and spend; [its] impact could be very significant to the UK, financially, socially and technically, as it can lead the way for a UK system backed by the Bank of England.

In terms of technology, Millicent’s decentralized finance network integrates with existing open banking frameworks worldwide, creating—for the first time in history—a universal financial system, with currencies that can easily flow across borders as well as between on-chain and off-chain ecosystems.

Furthermore, the network has an ultra-scalable and highly-interoperable ecosystem that processes tens of thousands of transactions per second, with sub-second finality, as well as transfer data, assets, and smart contract calls with major public and enterprise blockchain networks.

CEO, Stella Dyer said,

In today’s system, it’s usually the people with the least money who pay the most for financial services. Millicent is designed to level the playing field for everyone, creating an ‘Internet of Value’ that is open and accessible to all.

On the other hand, Millicent wasn’t only awarded the UKRI grant because of its technology. The Millicent network’s social impact also powerfully resonated with the awarding body. Creating an open, instant, globally-connected, low-fee infrastructure is paramount for financial inclusion.

Moreover, the company can help the 1.7 billion unbanked people around the globe, everyday people in all walks of life, as well as small to medium enterprises, while its open-source framework opens up Millicent’s next-gen infrastructure to a wide pool of developers, ready to construct the financial services and primitives of the future.