Project Pythagore was launched by Banque de France and Euroclear on 2025/10/10 to tokenise the Negotiable European Commercial Paper, or NEU CP, market, which Euroclear described as the largest short-term debt market in the euro area at about €310 billion outstanding. Official materials present it as a gradual market-modernisation initiative rather than a completed market-wide production rollout.

Pythagore targets the NEU CP market

Project Pythagore is a specific market-infrastructure initiative built around NEU CP, not a broad plan to tokenise all financial securities at once. Euroclear said in its 2025 launch announcement that Banque de France and Euroclear were starting with the NEU CP market, which it sized at roughly €310 billion outstanding and described as the euro area’s largest short-term debt market.

That focus matters because NEU CP is a real corporate funding instrument rather than a theoretical blockchain use case. Later Euroclear project material narrowed the confirmed workflow further by stating that Pythagore connects NEU CP issuance, settlement and asset servicing to Euroclear’s Digital Financial Market Infrastructure, or D-FMI. That is a more precise description than the broader secondary claim that tests would span the entire lifecycle, including collateral use and redemption.

Field	Detail
Project / launch	Pythagore / 2025/10/10
Initial instrument	Negotiable European Commercial Paper (NEU CP)
Market scale	About €310 billion outstanding
Securities workflow platform	Euroclear D-FMI for issuance, settlement and asset servicing
Euro cash settlement route	Pontes linked to TARGET Services for central-bank-money settlement
Confirmed status	Gradual migration, not a confirmed full market-wide rollout

The practical conclusion is that Pythagore already has a named instrument, a named market and a named post-trade platform. That gives the story more weight than a routine partnership note and sets up the next question: how the euro cash side is meant to settle.

Pontes defines the euro settlement path

Pythagore’s confirmed euro settlement route runs through Pontes, the Eurosystem infrastructure for settling DLT-based wholesale transactions in central bank money. ECB material defines Pontes as the link between market DLT platforms and TARGET Services, which means the securities workflow and the cash leg are designed as connected but distinct parts of the architecture.

This is the main reason the project stands out. Euroclear’s Pythagore material ties tokenised NEU CP activity to D-FMI, while the ECB’s Pontes framework provides the official settlement-money bridge. The Eurosystem then formally launched Pontes on 2026/09/21 with an initial core set of services and said further features and longer operating hours would be added over time. In other words, the settlement route now exists, but it is still evolving.

NEU CP’s own market rules help explain why this design matters. European Systemic Risk Board material says NEU CP can have a maximum maturity of one year, a minimum amount of €150,000, and can be issued in euro or other currencies. For a large short-term market that already depends on efficient funding and turnover, post-trade automation only becomes meaningful if the cash leg is reliable and scalable. That also leads directly to the separate non-euro question.

USD CoinVertible adds a non-euro track

SG-FORGE’s role is best understood as a non-euro extension rather than the core of Pythagore. Euroclear said in a separate announcement that it and SG-FORGE are exploring the use of USD CoinVertible to settle tokenised USD-denominated NEU CP, while Société Générale-FORGE identified USD CoinVertible, or USDCV, as its dollar-denominated electronic-money token under the MiCA framework.

That distinction is important because it prevents a common misunderstanding. The euro route in Pythagore is tied to central bank money through Pontes, whereas the USD track is being assessed for a market that can issue in more than one currency. The available primary material supports that two-track structure, but not the stronger secondary claim that a defined 5% share of the NEU CP market is already assigned to the dollar-settlement test.

Banque de France’s later public framing, carried in a 2025 speech published by the Bank for International Settlements, also points to a measured rollout. It described Pythagore as a medium-term effort to modernise post-trade processes through gradual migration to Euroclear-provided DLT infrastructure, not as an isolated experiment and not as a completed market conversion. The next meaningful confirmation would be clearer evidence on live transaction scope, participant roles and whether official materials expand the tested functions beyond issuance, settlement and asset servicing.