Press Release · 28 July 2026
Frankfurt am Main/Luxembourg, 28 July 2026 – Regulated Layer One (RL1), Europe's neutral, collaborative DLT network developed specifically for regulated financial markets, today announces the establishment of a European Cooperative Society (SCE) based in Luxembourg. RL1 will be led by Henning Vollbehr, who has been appointed Managing Director of the SCE. Vollbehr has before led SWIAT as Managing Director. The SCE brings together leading financial institutions to overcome the current fragmentation of blockchain networks within the regulated financial sector and to create a neutral, member-owned, pan-European DLT utility for tokenised assets, digital money and next-generation financial markets use cases. All RL1 members benefit from equal decision-making rights, influence over the network's further development and direct access to a functioning ecosystem at an institutional level.
Ten European financial institutions have agreed to establish a European Cooperative Society (SCE). The RL1 Cooperative will consist of the following institutions:
KfW and L-Bank, which have also been members of the initiative since 2025 and 2026 respectively, will continue to actively support RL1 in its establishment and expansion. Furthermore, concrete discussions are currently underway with a number of other renowned European banks regarding their participation in RL1 including NatWest who has been an active participant in Phase 1 of the initiative.
The RL1 Network is based on SWIAT's production-grade DLT Network, now owned by the cooperative; it has been in production for three years and has since successfully completed more than 50 transactions with a total volume of more than EUR 700m. SWIAT's software is fully compatible with RL1, enabling immediate implementation of use cases such as bond tokenization. SWIAT's existing application ecosystem including offerings and productive solutions like Bafin-supervised German electronic securities registries remain with SWIAT, yet will transition seamlessly to run on RL1. Moreover, the design and operation of RL1 as an open, regulated infrastructure empowers its members to jointly develop and scale their own digital solutions and transparent protocols, thereby establishing the base for common industry standards.
RL1 provides not only a shared infrastructure, but a joint governance that overcomes existing market fragmentation due to different DLT networks. RL1's DLT network will offer a reliable and long-term solution for financial institutions to offer DLT-based financial services in compliance with IT-requirements for financial institutions As a permissioned, interoperable network, RL1 thus connects assets, services and access points for regulated institutions.
Recent months have highlighted the growing need for such a shared infrastructure, as tokenisation has gradually progressed from pilot projects towards a scalable market infrastructure. The ECB's initiatives – including Appia and Pontes – as well as stablecoins, tokenised money market funds, digital bonds, smart derivatives, solutions for mobilising collateral and settlement platforms all rely on shared infrastructures that reduce fragmentation and enable reliable and efficient settlement.
Henning Vollbehr, designated Managing Director of RL1, said: “I am delighted that the participating financial institutions have placed their trust in me and appointed me as Managing Director of the RL1 SCE. RL1 is the result of our collective work and the evolution of SWIAT, which I have had the privilege of helping to shape over the past four years. Against this backdrop, I am very pleased to now be able to drive forward the digital transformation towards a unified financial market infrastructure at an institutional level as well. Going forward, RL1 will serve as the connecting infrastructure for Europe's digital financial market, enabling participating institutions to move from isolated tokenization initiatives to an integrated, liquid, and scalable capital market ecosystem. I am excited about this opportunity and look forward to the task ahead.”
RL1 is a European Cooperative Society (Société Coopérative Européenne) domiciled in Luxembourg. It owns and operates a private, permissioned blockchain network built for regulated financial markets, providing a common infrastructure layer for institutional digital assets.
Anchored in Europe and open to regulated financial institutions worldwide, RL1 is built to carry the market beyond isolated pilots and towards shared, production-grade infrastructure, providing the platform for tokenised financial market instruments and services.
The cooperative was established by ten founding European financial institutions. Governance rests exclusively with its members on the basis of equal decision-making rights, ensuring that no single institution or group of node operators exercises undue control over the network.
By establishing a shared, trust-based foundation for tokenised assets, digital money and next-generation settlement, RL1 is positioned to become core infrastructure for the global digital financial markets. It aims to reduce today's fragmentation, connect regulated participants across jurisdictions, and set a common standard for institutional-grade tokenisation at scale.
SWIAT GmbH is a 2022 founded Frankfurt-based fintech that develops blockchain-software. By the same token it is a tokenization platform for an open decentralised financial market infrastructure. In addition, SWIAT operates a regulated registry services under the German Electronic Securities Act (eWpG) for digital securities. By 2025, the SWIAT blockchain platform had onboarded over 50 participants and settled securities worth more than EUR 700 million, becoming the leading blockchain ecosystem designed to meet capital market, compliance and regulatory requirements. Developed for banks and financial institutions, the SWIAT platform enables the issuance of regulated digital assets with a high level of security and regulatory compliance. As an open platform, SWIAT aims to create a global ecosystem for the settlement and trading of digital assets that ensures efficiency, security and interoperability across all market participants. SWIAT shareholders are DekaBank, LBBW, SC Ventures (Standard Chartered Bank) and the fintech Comyno. https://www.swiat.io/