Boston Fed makes digital dollar code progress

finextra.com:

The researchers investigated two possible code bases, both of which exceeded speed and throughput requirements.The first, DLT-based, architecture processed transactions through an ordering server which organises fully validated transactions into batches, or blocks, and materialises an ordered transaction history. It completed over 99% of transactions in under two seconds but the ordering server resulted in a bottleneck which led to peak throughput of approximately 170,000 transactions per second.

In contrast, the second architecture processed transactions in parallel on multiple computers without relying on a single ordering server to prevent double spends. This resulted in superior scalability, with throughput of 1.7 million transactions per second with 99% of transactions completing in under a second.Say the researchers: "Despite using ideas from blockchain technology, we found that a distributed ledger operating under the jurisdiction of different actors was not needed to achieve our goals.

"Specifically, a distributed ledger does not match the trust assumptions in Project Hamilton's approach, which assumes that the platform would be administered by a central actor. We found that even when run under the control of a single actor, a distributed ledger architecture has downsides.