Findings in relation to efficiency show that, with regard to the specific aspects of RTGS services tested to date, a DLT-based solution could meet the performance needs of current large value payment systems. Given the nature of DLT arrangements, in which the process of validating transactions and reaching consensus is more complex than in a centralised system, this is encouraging evidence. The project also confirmed the well-known trade-off between network size and performance: increasing the number of validating nodes led to an increase in payment execution time. Moreover, the distance between validating nodes has an impact on performance: the time required to process transactions increased with the distance between sets of validating nodes.
The test results also suggest that a range of node configuration and system parameters needs to be taken into account when designing a DLT arrangement. As discussed in this report, the number of nodes, and the distance between these nodes, has a crucial impact on performance. Similarly, system parameters, such as:
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the number of transactions grouped together in a block (linked to the batch size) and
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the minimum interval needed to create a new block (timeout),
affect overall latency.
Node configuration and parameters should be taken into account, depending on the application needs.
In terms of resilience and reliability, the test results provide fresh perspectives underpinned by quantitative results, highlighting DLT’s potential to withstand issues such as:
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validating node failures and
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incorrect data formats.
As for the node failures, the test results confirmed that a validating node could recover in a relatively short period of time irrespective of downtime. The results also showed that transactions were rejected whenever the certificate authority was not available, which could possibly constitute a single point of failure (processing restarted without any other system intervention once the certificate authority became available again). Lastly, the impact of transaction requests with incorrect formats can be managed by smart contracts: here, the system has no difficulties processing transactions in the correct format.
In conclusion, this joint effort has produced a thorough set of results that provide reasons to be optimistic with respect to the capabilities of DLT within payment systems. It is, however, important to bear in mind that this work has been conducted in a test environment; therefore, any assumptions regarding the capacity for DLT to be used in production should not be made from this report.
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