Redbelly Blockchain spins out of USyd, CSIRO

Redbelly Blockchain, the Australian blockchain developed by the University of Sydney and CSIRO, has spun out as a commercial enterprise, Redbelly Network, in a joint venture with blockchain venture studio Block8.

Redbelly, which was unveiled in 2018 as the world’s fastest blockchain, is now also significantly safer and more corruption-proof than other blockchains in commercial use. Inventor Vincent Gramoli, who will serve as CTO of Redbelly Network, said the past three years had yielded exciting developments for the network, readying it for a wide range of commercial applications.

“Once we had proven our research around speed, we wanted to look at security,” he said. “A problem with classic blockchain, which results in the theft of millions of dollars of assets every year, is that over time they evolve into multiple branches. This allows corrupt activity to take place when cybercriminals transfer an amount in one branch and then contradict it in another in what’s called a balance attack. This is compounded by their ability to then erase branches, concealing the identity of the criminals.”

Redbelly has been structured to make this type of activity impossible. It has also been developed to allow for ‘expressiveness’ – complex programming. “This work means that our environment allows for the most sophisticated and elegant product development and deployment,” Gramoli said. “Any decentralised app that currently runs on Ethereum can be ported directly into the Redbelly Network.”

Redbelly’s speed tests last month, simulating a Central Bank Digital Currency application, showed throughput of over 100,000 secure transactions per second across three Australian data centres. By comparison, the Visa network can handle 65,000 transactions per second, and the Bitcoin blockchain less than five. Gramoli said this capacity allowed for massive scalability.

“Visa and MasterCard together rarely process more than 10,000 transactions per second even at peak times,” he said. “So our ability to safely handle ten times that amount gives us massive flexibility in the types of applications we can run on the network, where they can be deployed, and the potential user base.”

Another unique element of the Redbelly Network is that it is a ‘known’ environment, meaning all participants have to prove their identities before using it. The anonymous transactions that are seen as normal in the crypto world are not allowed in the Redbelly environment. Network Executive Chairman Alan Burt said this feature makes Redbelly more attractive for transactions where parties being able to know and trust one another is important.

“Redbelly has to interact with the real world to get and verify information, and that’s really different,” he said. “Transactions on our blockchain are accountable and enforceable by law, and I think this makes Redbelly significantly more attractive for applications where cyber security and data sovereignty are important.

“Redbelly has been named by the Government in the Australian National Blockchain Roadmap, and we are starting here in terms of the first commercial applications,” Burt said. “However, the scope is definitely there for global applications – we have the scale to do just about anything.”