The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) of the U.K. has announced the launch of a digital sandbox, a testing environment for firms to evaluate their products in the early stages of development. The sandbox, which was trialled in 2020, is open to data providers and offers access to data sets, application program interfaces (APIs) and data security protection. According to a person familiar with the project, the sandbox can be configured to support a number of distributed ledgers and digital-asset use cases, such as building interoperability between networks.
John Glen, former Economic Secretary, set out plans for the sandbox in a speech last year, expressing his desire to foster crypto innovation in the country. This sentiment was echoed by his successor, Andrew Griffith. Prior to the launch, the sandbox was only available during pilots and TechSprints, which brought together people from the financial industry to address industry challenges.
A sandbox provides a secure setting in which developers can test and evaluate their products in the knowledge that any unintended side effects will be isolated from a live environment, said the FCA on its website.