The researchers published results from “Project Hamilton,” which was first announced in 2020. To explore the use of existing and new tech to build and test a hypothetical CBDC platform.
Theoretical research into a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in the U.S. has found that distributed ledger architecture has “downsides.”
CBDC Reserach
The Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the Digital Currency Initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published the findings of their initial research into a CBDC on Feb 3.
Also, this research project is known as Project Hamilton and a “hypothetical general purpose CBDC” using two potential models.
Further, the first one processed transactions through “ordering server” distributed ledger technology (DLT). This server organized the validated transactions into blocks to create an ordered transaction history.
Moreover, the researchers were able to use this architecture to complete over 99% of transactions in under two seconds. Though, the majority of transactions in under 0.7 seconds. The ordering server offers a number of issues Also, the researchers concluded that “a distributed ledger architecture has downsides. “
For instance, it creates performance bottlenecks and requires the central transaction processor to maintain transaction history. This is one of our designs that do not, resulting in significantly improved transaction throughput scalability properties.”
Furthermore, CBDC added that despite using ideas from blockchain technology. The second architecture processed transactions in parallel on multiple computers. Rather than relying on a single ordering server to prevent double-spending. The researchers wrote that although “this results in superior scalability,” it did not “materialize an ordered history for all transactions.”
Further, it is shown throughput of 1.7 million transactions per second with 99% of transactions. They were durably in completion in under a second. The majority of transactions were under completion in under half a second.
Moreover, project Hamilton was first announced in 2020 to explore the use of existing and new technologies to build and test a hypothetical digital currency platform. The code is the first contribution to OpenCBDC. A project maintained by MIT will serve as a platform for further CBDC research.
