Australia's Science Agency Claims Breakthrough in Global Blockchain Test

An Australian federal science agency has completed a global test on a blockchain network it developed with the University of Sydney, which, the two said, can process 30,000 cross-border transactions per second.

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization released the test result in an announcement on Wednesday, which was deployed using the Amazon Web Services global cloud infrastructure.

Called the Red Belly Blockchain and created by the CSIRO's technology arm Data61 and the Concurrent Systems Research Group from the University of Sydney, the network was tested among 1,000 nodes across 14 countries in the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe.

The CSIRO claimed "The benchmark was set by sending 30,000 transactions per second from different geographic regions" with an average latency of three seconds, and said it was the agency's first blockchain test in a global setting.

The goal of the network, it added, is to solve the common issue of scalability among major blockchains at the moment by using an alternative consensus algorithm instead of the proof-of-work mechanism which is adopted by public networks such as bitcoin.

"Real-world applications of blockchain have been struggling to get off the ground due to issues with energy consumption and complexities induced by the proof of work."

The test comes at a time when the science agency is also working with IBM to create an Australia National Blockchain.

As CoinDesk previously reported, the CSIRO aims to use this blockchain network to facilitate large-scale business and financial transactions for domestic and international enterprises based on blockchain-powered smart contracts.

The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies.

CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.