“This is not just a POC,” Ariyasinghe said. “Everyone’s coming in with their eyes wide open. Appetite is very much about building real infrastructure … The target is live transactions within a legal, regulatory compliance framework within the next 12 months.”
A $150 billion trade corridor
The initiative is focusing on the trade corridor between Europe and South Korea, an economic artery that processes over $150 billion in goods and services annually, making it one of the world’s 15 largest trade routes. It also taps into regional trends: Industry data shows that 60% of all global stablecoin payments are happening in Asia.
“I completely agree with that stat,” Ariyasinghe said. “It gives people a good indication of where real demand is. In less developed financial ecosystems, demand is growing, but the infrastructure isn’t necessarily in place. These forms of tokenized cash are fulfilling a real need.”
Rather than forcing legacy financial institutions to overhaul their computer systems or buy cryptocurrency, Project Pangea intends to act as a middleware translator. Banks will trigger transactions using Swift—the global messaging network they have used since the 1970s—and Chainlink’s infrastructure will translate those commands into instant “atomic swaps” on a neutral, independent ledger called the Pangea L1 Network.
Project Pangea is designed to work with existing Swift and ISO 20022 banking standards, allowing traditional financial institutions to connect to blockchain-based settlement rails without replacing their payment infrastructure.