Many countries are working on creating their first CBDC and Israel is no exception; the Bank of Israel has begun a crypto pilot program of its own and confirmed it wants to use the Ethereum network to create the CBDC.
Several other countries are in different stages of developing their CBDC, such as China, Japan, Sweden, and France. The work on the CBDC in these countries began some time ago, so they have a headstart when compared to Israel, which is still in the initial stages.
Yoav Soffer, the CBDC Project Manager of the central bank, confirmed that Israel is using the ETH technology as part of the trial simply because it was available, not because it is established that this is the technology that will end up being used.
Soffer did mention that the project is a very complex one and that predicting when it will end is hard. Other issues, such as uncertainty if a digital currency can serve the needs of the population, or the infrastructure, also need to be taken into account.