BIS Tests XRP Ledger for Tamper-Proof Official Data

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) evaluated the XRP Ledger for making official statistics resistant to tampering. Blockchain hashes were used to verify the origin and integrity of data.

Published on September 2, BIS Working Paper No. 1374 anchors cryptographic fingerprints of official datasets on the XRPL, without storing the underlying data on the chain.

Trust in official statistics underpins evidence-based policy. But how can a user know a data set they downloaded is the one the publisher released? Our new paper proposes an answer. https://t.co/ezD1w5qxJb#SDMX #OfficialStatistics pic.twitter.com/zY467C1BQy

— Bank for International Settlements (@BIS_org) September 2, 2026

How the BIS Proof of Concept Actually Works

A specific gap in SDMX, the standard for exchanging official economic and financial statistics, is addressed in the paper. SDMX has no native cryptographic method to validate data once it has been redistributed.

Using SHA3-512 hashing, researchers created a cryptographic fingerprint for each dataset. Multiple fingerprints were then grouped into a Merkle tree, and the resulting root value was anchored on the XRPL.

A signed W3C Verifiable Credential identifies the publisher, enabling a single ledger lookup to confirm authorship and integrity.

“…Specifically, a particular type of blockchain – the XRP Ledger (XRPL) – has been used as a proof of concept because of its low nominal fees, fast consensus finality, availability of developer resources and technical analysis of the consensus protocol…,” The Bank for International Settlements said.

Only the fingerprints are recorded on-chain. The statistics themselves stay off-chain, preserving confidentiality while enabling a single ledger entry to cover thousands of datasets simultaneously.

According to the paper's performance metrics, the prototype had median publication times of 3 to 5 seconds and verification times of 1 to 2 seconds. The BIS made the reference implementation open source through its Open Tech initiative.

Why the XRP Token Itself Played No Part

Each anchoring transaction in the prototype used a minimal fixed value of 10 drops, roughly 0.00001 XRP, only to meet the network's technical requirement for acceptance. The token served purely as a transaction cost, not as an asset being tracked, exchanged, or referenced by the system.

This distinction is made clear in the paper's architecture. The cost model treats the XRPL fee as negligible, stating that on-chain costs become economically irrelevant when datasets are efficiently batched.

The research adds an institutional use case for XRPL as infrastructure, but it does not indicate BIS adoption for official operations or involve XRP as an asset in any capacity.

“Consistent with institutions testing public rails over time. They don’t want a press tour, they just published the test. Once a ledger is good enough for official records, the next phase comes,” Vandell Aljarrah, co-founder of Black Swan Capitalist, said.