Methods

Every change to this site goes through a pull request in a private repository and is approved by the editor before publication.

Weekly Brief

The Weekly Brief is written by the editor. Each week a software agent prepares a research draft: the week’s items, each with its source, and a proposed lead. The editor chooses the lead, writes the commentary and checks every claim against its source before publication.

Under the Hood

Topics are drawn from a standing list of questions. A software agent may prepare a first draft, with a source for every factual statement; each draft is rewritten and checked against its sources before publication. Every piece compares more than one approach, gives the strongest case against the design it explains, and discloses any relationship with a vendor or institution it names.

State of Play, Regulatory Wire and the Pilot Scorecard

Software agents may watch regulator websites and public announcements and draft changes. They never publish. Each draft arrives as a pull request listing every change with its source and flagging anything uncertain, and each claim is checked against its source before merging.

Rules every entry follows

• Every factual record carries at least one source link.
• Items from regulators that publish in a local language are summarised in English, with the original title kept alongside.
• Every Regulatory Wire item carries a one-line read on why it matters.

How pilots are scored

Each pilot is reviewed six months after announcement, then every twelve months, and sooner when a committed date has passed. Every review cites evidence and records:

• Status: live (public evidence of activity in the last twelve months), quiet (none for twelve months) or dead (ended, or quiet for two years).
• Stage: test (no real value at stake), pilot (real value, limited to a set group, volume or period) or production (an ongoing service beyond the first participants, used more than once).
• Ledger: a public chain, permissioned tokens on a public chain, a private network based on Ethereum’s software, another private ledger, or unknown.
• Settlement: whether the cash side settles on the ledger in central bank money, tokenised bank deposits or a stablecoin, or outside it.
• Access: open to anyone, limited to approved institutions or investors, or closed to one institution or a sandbox.
• Legal standing: whether the token is the legal record, mirrors a record held elsewhere, or runs under a sandbox exemption.
• Scale: simulated, a single transaction, repeated, or sustained with published volumes.

Each pilot page also lists what the institution said it would do, and whether it did.

Automated checks

Before any change is merged, automated checks confirm that every entry has the required fields, uses known markets and topics, links only to entries that exist, and that its source links resolve.