Experts test technical research for a hypothetical central bank digital currency

[Jim__]

From TechXplore

In collaboration with a team at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, MIT experts have begun designing and testing technical research through which further examination of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) can be performed in the U.S.

The effort, known as Project Hamilton, is in an exploratory phase, and the research is not intended as a pilot or for public deployment. Instead, the researchers have explored two different approaches that could be used to process transactions, and thus could indicate the technical feasibility of a potential CBDC model. In a process involving significant design flexibility, the MIT group tested factors such as the volume and speed of transactions, and the resilience of the systems in general, among other requirements for a viable digital currency.

"The core of what we built is a high-speed transaction processor for a centralized digital currency, to demonstrate the throughput, latency, and resilience of a system that could support a payment economy at the scale of the United States," says Neha Narula, director of MIT's Digital Currency Initiative and a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab, who led the effort with the Boston Fed. "It is important to note that this project is not a comment on whether or not the U.S. should issue a CBDC—but work like this is vital to help determine the answer to that question. This project serves as a platform for creating and comparing more viable designs, and provides a place to experiment and collaborate on more advanced digital currency functionality."

The researchers developed two complete sets of computing source code, or "codebases," for the software systems. One codebase was capable of handling 1.7 million transactions per second, with 99 percent of those transactions finishing in less than a second—well above the basic benchmark of 100,000 transactions per second they sought to achieve. The other codebase was able to process about 170,000 transactions per second. That level of throughput would help finalize every transaction at a central bank, while enabling the growth of other machine-to-machine transactions—both of which would be vital to a potential CBDC.

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[hlthe2b]

1. For any number of reasons (beyond the intense global warming impacts), I really wish cryptocurrency

had never been embraced. Maybe I will kick my "mortal coil" before it replaces country-state-regulated currency... but, I just don't see anything short of major problems coming from this.

[HariSeldon]

2. I see this as simply a more secure way of transacting in dollars

We already have computer systems that record transactions made in dollars. The advantages here are that the transactions are processed faster, are less amenable to "tinkering", and might even be able to be recorded in a publicly available (and thus, highly replicated) blockchain. What I wouldn't give to be able to have the confidence in transactional security on my credit card which is built into the fabric of blockchain crypto! But I don't want the power wastage, oligopoly, or objectivist pipe dream that come with the "independent" cryptocurrencies.