Best known as the technology that underpins Bitcoin and other virtual currencies, blockchain is a digital public ledger where transactions are recorded and confirmed pseudonymously.

Named the ‘Red Belly Blockchain’, the new system being developed by the University of Sydney’s School of Information Technologies will allow secure and almost instantaneous digital transfer of virtual currencies across the world.

“In recent testing, our blockchain achieved the best performance we have seen so far – with more than 440,000 transactions per second on 100 machines,” said University of Sydney academic Dr Vincent Gramoli, who heads up the Concurrent Systems Research Group developing the technology.

“In comparison, VISA’s network has a peak capacity of around 56,000 transactions per second and the Bitcoin network is limited to around seven transactions per second.”