Project Hamilton has concluded, weeks after legislators’ enquiry according to Boston Fed

Project Hamilton, the probe task of the United States Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), announced its decision successful the runup to Christmas. The two-year task looked astatine the method aspects of a hypothetical United States integer dollar cardinal slope integer currency (CBDC).

“Project Hamilton took captious aboriginal steps toward a deeper knowing of however wealth mightiness enactment amended for all,” Boston Fed enforcement vice president Jim Cunha said successful a connection announcing the decision of the project.

In February, the technologically “agnostic” task released a achromatic insubstantial and open-source probe bundle called OpenCBDC successful 2 versions, lone 1 of which utilized distributed ledger technology. At that time, organizers promised that continuing probe would look astatine “privacy, auditability, programmability, interoperability, and more.”

In its Dec. 22 announcement, the Boston Fed stated:

“Researchers astatine the Boston Fed and MIT said they program to merchandise further retrospectives connected Project Hamilton’s findings successful the coming months.”

MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative (DCI), which is the enactment that had partnered with the Boston Fed, is expected to clasp a “research release” connected Jan. 12, 2023.

Next month, articulation america for a probe merchandise connected fiscal inclusion and CBDC - registry present astatine https://t.co/B6N3DqP0Vs https://t.co/srbEOEiO71

— Digital Currency Initiative (@mitDCI) December 8, 2022

The Fed besides hinted that enactment had continued connected OpenCBDC, noting that it had reaching a throughput complaint of 1.84 cardinal transactions per second. That is presumably connected the non-blockchain version, which had reached 1.7 cardinal transactions per 2nd arsenic of February. The blockchain mentation processed 170,000 transactions per 2nd arsenic of that time.

Project Hamilton was the taxable of a missive from 9 U.S. legislators headed by Rep. Tom Emmer addressed to Boston Fed president Susan Collins connected Dec. 1. The Congress members wrote:

“There has been insufficient visibility into the enactment betwixt Project Hamilton and the backstage sector.”

The letter’s authors asked astir the engagement of backstage firms successful the probe and expressed interest astir unfair advantages for probe participants successful aboriginal CBDC development. They besides asked astir the project’s attack to privacy. They requested written responses without suggesting a deadline.

The missive did not sanction circumstantial backstage firms associated with the project. The achromatic insubstantial did not admit immoderate backstage involvement.

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Emmer is an hostile of CBDCs and introduced authorities successful January to prohibit the Fed from issuing a U.S. CBDC straight to consumers.

Since February, the DCI has picked up caller partners. The Bank of England and Bank of Canada some entered into 12-month probe projects with the DCI successful March.