Quick answer: Heraclius is a research prototype described in a Federal Reserve working paper. It is a Byzantine fault tolerant (BFT) key-value database aimed at payments infrastructure, and the authors reported roughly 110,000 operations per second across up to 256 nodes with about 0.2 second latency. The paper studies BFT as a design principle for resilient payment systems. It does not endorse XRP, XLM, HBAR, or any other token.
Updated 07/17/2026. By Jake Claver. Educational content, not investment advice.
In February 2025 the Federal Reserve published a paper in its Finance and Economics Discussion Series (FEDS) titled “Heraclius: A Byzantine Fault Tolerant Database System with Potential for Modern Payments Systems.” The crypto community read it as validation for BFT-based public ledgers such as XRP, Stellar (XLM), and Hedera (HBAR). The reality is more measured, and more interesting. The paper is a technical study of how to keep payment rails running when parts of the system fail or behave maliciously.
Below is what the paper actually says, why BFT matters for settlement, and where the public networks fit, kept separate from the research itself.
What the Heraclius paper actually reports
The Federal Reserve’s Heraclius page describes a parallelizable, leader-based BFT key-value store that could be extended for use in payment systems. The authors, listed in the full FEDS working paper (PDF), are James Lovejoy, Tarakaram Gollamudi, Jeremy Kassis, Narayanan Pillai, Jeremy Brotherton, and Eric Thompson.
The headline numbers from the prototype:
- Up to 256 nodes in the test network.
- About 110,000 operations per second of transactional volume.
- Roughly 0.2 seconds of transaction latency.
The paper’s own framing is worth repeating plainly: modern payments systems are critical infrastructure, they run on computers, and those computers can fail. A BFT design is meant to keep the system correct even when some nodes crash or act dishonestly. The tradeoff BFT has historically faced is performance, and Heraclius is presented as an attempt to push throughput up by executing transactions in parallel.
What Byzantine fault tolerance means for payments
A system is Byzantine fault tolerant if it keeps agreeing on the correct state even when a fraction of participants send conflicting or malicious messages. The name comes from the “Byzantine generals” problem in distributed computing: how do independent parties reach agreement when some of them may lie?
For a payment rail, this is the difference between an outage or a double-spend and a network that keeps settling correctly through hardware failures, bugs, or attacks. The Fed paper is explicit that an outage of a payment system could cause a serious ripple effect through the economy it supports, which is why resilience, not just speed, is the point.
Where XRP, XLM, and HBAR fit
Public networks in the XRP, Stellar, and Hedera families already use BFT-style consensus, which is why the paper drew their communities’ attention. Each takes a different approach:
- XRP Ledger uses a trust-based consensus where each validator relies on a Unique Node List. Per the XRPL consensus documentation, the network keeps making correct progress as long as fewer than 20% of trusted validators are faulty, and it halts rather than confirming invalid transactions if too many fail. Safety is prioritized over liveness.
- Stellar (XLM) runs the Stellar Consensus Protocol, a form of federated Byzantine agreement. As the Stellar Development Foundation describes it, SCP is a proof-of-agreement mechanism designed to be faster and more energy-efficient than proof-of-work chains.
- Hedera (HBAR) uses the hashgraph algorithm, which Hedera documents as asynchronous Byzantine fault tolerant (aBFT), holding as long as attackers control less than one-third of stake.
The shared thread is that these are all BFT-family designs built for the same problem the Fed paper studies: agreement under partial failure. That is a genuine engineering parallel. It is not evidence that the Federal Reserve prefers, tested, or would deploy any of these specific networks.
The one caveat that matters
A FEDS working paper reflects the research of its authors. The Federal Reserve is clear that these papers do not represent official Board positions or policy. Heraclius is a prototype and a study, not a product roadmap and not an endorsement. Any claim that the Fed “chose” XRP, XLM, or HBAR misreads the document. What the paper does confirm is that serious payments researchers treat BFT as a credible foundation for resilient settlement infrastructure.
Why this matters
Cross-border settlement is being rebuilt around systems that stay correct under stress. Whether that happens inside central-bank and interbank infrastructure, on public BFT ledgers, or some mix of both is still an open question. The Heraclius paper is one concrete data point showing that a central-bank research team is measuring BFT performance in real prototypes. For anyone following payments modernization, the useful takeaway is the design direction, not a token pick. For broader context on how U.S. regulators frame digital assets, the CFTC digital assets page is a primary reference.
Common questions
Did the Federal Reserve endorse XRP, XLM, or HBAR?
No. The Heraclius paper is a technical study of a Byzantine fault tolerant database prototype. It does not name, test, or endorse any specific cryptocurrency, and FEDS working papers do not represent official Federal Reserve policy.
What is Heraclius?
Heraclius is a research prototype described in a Federal Reserve FEDS working paper: a parallelizable, leader-based Byzantine fault tolerant key-value database designed to explore resilient payment systems.
How fast was the Heraclius prototype?
The authors reported about 110,000 operations per second across up to 256 nodes, with roughly 0.2 seconds of transaction latency.
Why is Byzantine fault tolerance important for payments?
BFT lets a payment network keep agreeing on the correct state even when some participants fail or act maliciously. That resilience helps prevent outages and double-spends in critical settlement infrastructure.
Do XRP, Stellar, and Hedera use BFT consensus?
Yes, each uses a BFT-family approach. The XRP Ledger uses trust-based validator consensus, Stellar uses the Stellar Consensus Protocol (federated Byzantine agreement), and Hedera uses the aBFT hashgraph algorithm.
This content is educational only. It is not tax, legal, or investment advice. Check primary sources and speak with a qualified professional before making financial decisions.
