According to Cointelegraph, IBM has shared its thoughts on what it will take to make the digital euro a success in a recent blog post. The tech giant suggested five items for designers to help the European Central Bank (ECB) digital currency enter the competitive and diverse payments landscape in the Eurozone. Some of IBM's points are already found in the European Commission (EC) legislative proposal. The first point, 'build on existing rails,' is foreseen in the EC plan but can be extended, the authors said. Simplicity and familiarity will be key to initial adoption, they added. Intermediaries will also have a role to play in digital euro acceptance, and the digital currency should be designed to accommodate their needs. The authors see a need for a more granular ecosystem of intermediaries and suggest planning for more than one intermediary between the retail user and ECB's digital euro components to better support smaller intermediaries. Standardization of APIs would simplify integration and encourage competition, the post said. IBM also suggested extending the EC proposal's strong offline privacy guarantees to online activities to ensure end-to-end transaction privacy. Privacy rules need to be harmonized with several existing regulations, including reporting thresholds, to ensure that reporting is siloed. The authors noted that distributed ledger technology is not essential for the creation of a digital euro, but blockchain technology offers the most benefits. Its operation need not be any more carbon-intensive than non-blockchain systems, they added. Finally, IBM advises to start with a minimal viable product for faster time to market and a sandbox to deal with the complexity of the future digital euro's operating environment.