[gaigalas]

You are incorrect.

What went down were apps from banks that use PIX, not the core infrastructure.

That is responsibility of the banks. It means private banks like Itau and Nubank rely on Amazon, not the Central Bank. They relied on those hyperscalers for their operation, and their gateways went down with it.

PIX has sovereign, private infrastructure on brazillian soil managed by Banco Central. NIC.br and other essential services do the same.

PIX is ours.

[reese_john]

This is a minor technicality, if private banks are down then the SPI is basically useless. Banks can send money to each other but clients can’t see it.

> What went down were apps

Plus, this is an oversimplification.

Transaction authorization, Fraud/AML screening, account validation are not just part of an “app”, they are core functionality of private banks operations, and they are made scalable by big cloud providers.

The true scaling burden is on private banks not the BCB

[gaigalas]

> The true scaling burden is on private banks not the BCB

Exactly. That is one of the aspects that allow for the system to be sovereign and scalable. Banco Central controls the core, and that's all it needs to.

This is good design. Descentralized, modern, resilient and efficient.

[reese_john]

> Banco Central controls the core, and that's all it needs to. This is good design. Descentralized, modern, resilient and efficient.

I agree. But was that not the case before Pix/SPI? It really didn’t change the status quo.

The STR (transfer reserve system), which SPI is still fully dependent in practice btw, is decentralized, modern and efficient.

The biggest change here was scale and adoption by private banks and end users, not sovereign infra.

[gaigalas]

That is an offshoot topic which is, in my opinion, irrelevant for the sovereignty discussion.

I'm here just to clear out the confusion regarding the infrastructural pieces. The core PIX is undeniably sovereign and state-owned, and the Amazon downtime was lack of resilience on the part of the banks (which they could have totally designed around but decided not to).

[reese_john]

> I'm here just to clear out the confusion regarding the infrastructural pieces. The core PIX is undeniably sovereign and state-owned

Sure, I can see the confusion, I should have made that clearer.

Let me rephrase it: the "core PIX" is mostly an implementation of ISO20022 (pain,pacs, etc) messaging on top of HTTP APIs and BCB's own ledgers, plus a centralized KV datastore (Dict).

The implementation was excellent, but there is no technical moat in the "state-owned" part of the solution

The biggest technical challenges were, by design, delegated to the private sector, heavily relying on US hyperscalers to achieve Pix's operational requirements.

[gaigalas]

There is a wide misconception that state stuff needs to be fully state-developed. I don't subscribe to that view. Delegating and designing just-enough simple solutions, avoiding bureaucratic tanglements, is an immense challenge and done beautifully in this case.

The other direction (not using standards, owning parts you don't need) would make it for slower adoption, lots of new government responsibilities and very few additional sovereign control. It would be worse.

Building a "technical moat" is for companies which have direct competition. The state can solve this by making regulations. It doesn't need that technical moat, simplicity is better suited. It's acting exactly at the intersection it needs: in the regulation, delegation and coordination realm, not execution.

[vitorgrs]

It was not. TED had to talk with banks, only the final settlement went thought Central Bank.

With Pix, banks don't talk with each other. They are basically using Central Bank API to send and receive money.

before it was Bank Z ---> Bank Y

With Pix it's Bank X ---> SPI/BC ---> Bank B

[reese_john]

I don’t even understand what you mean by “banks had to talk to each other” and why you are referring to TED in the past tense when it’s still the largest settlement method by BRL amount

[vitorgrs]

Because TED is not the only way to send money now...? It's basically legacy, although yes, still used. Very rare you'll see Person to person/business using TED. Basically business to person...

And yes, literally banks had to "talk" with each other. Which is why it was paid and slower in first place and didn't worked 24/7.