Quick answer: FortisNet, Project Hamilton, and Interledger are three separate efforts aimed at making digital payment and settlement systems interoperable, so value and trade records can move between different ledgers and institutions. FortisNet is a commercial interoperability and atomic-settlement provider. Project Hamilton was a central-bank research project on a hypothetical U.S. digital dollar. Interledger is an open protocol for moving value across networks. They are thematically related but are not a single connected system, and none of them is a deployed central bank digital currency.
Updated 07/17/2026. By Jake Claver. Educational content, not investment advice.
Grouping these three together is useful because they attack the same friction from different angles: the world’s payment and trade systems do not talk to each other well. Below is what each one is, drawn from primary sources, and where the honest limits are. Getting the distinctions right matters more than implying a grand unified network that does not exist.
What FortisNet is
FortisNet describes itself as distributed-ledger infrastructure for governments, banks, financial institutions, and unbanked populations, focused on interoperability and atomic settlement, the ability to make two linked transfers either both complete or both fail. Per its own site, FortisNet was introduced at SWIFT’s SIBOS conference in October 2022 as an interoperability solution and won the HARBINGER 2023 challenge run by the Reserve Bank of India’s FinTech department and the National Payments Corporation of India. It was also shortlisted in the BIS Innovation Hub’s G20 TechSprint on cross-border payments, documented in the BIS G20 TechSprint 2023 report. Treat its performance claims (it advertises very high transaction throughput) as vendor marketing rather than independently audited benchmarks.
What Project Hamilton was
Project Hamilton was a research collaboration between the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and the MIT Digital Currency Initiative to study the technical feasibility of a hypothetical U.S. central bank digital currency. According to MIT DCI, the team built OpenCBDC-tx, an open-source transaction processor with two architectures: an atomizer design measured at roughly 170,000 transactions per second and a two-phase-commit design measured at up to about 1.7 million per second. The code is public on the OpenCBDC GitHub repository, and the findings are written up in the Boston Fed’s Project Hamilton Phase 1 executive summary and Phase 1 whitepaper. Two caveats matter: the project was research only and concluded in 2023, and building the software is explicitly not a decision by the Federal Reserve to issue a digital dollar.
What Interledger is
Interledger, stewarded by the Interledger Foundation, is an open protocol for sending payments across different ledgers and networks. It breaks a payment into small packets that route through intermediaries called connectors, so banks, mobile-money systems, and fintech platforms can move value between each other regardless of the underlying technology or currency. The World Bank has examined this approach for remittances in its People Move blog, and its research team has published on cross-ledger interoperability more broadly.
The common thread: interoperability, not a single network
What ties these together is the interoperability problem. Trade finance and cross-border payments still depend on siloed systems and, in the case of trade documents, a great deal of paper. Distributed-ledger and protocol-level approaches offer a way to make records and value portable between institutions. The World Bank has documented both the promise and the interoperability challenges of these systems in its research (see its Blockchain Interoperability working paper). The honest framing is that these are complementary experiments and products, not a deployed, unified global rail.
Why this matters
Interoperable settlement is where a lot of the practical value in digital finance sits, because moving money and trade documents between mismatched systems is slow and expensive today. Progress here could reduce cost and settlement time in real corridors. But research code, vendor products, and open protocols are at very different stages of maturity, and none of this should be read as a Ripple endorsement, a production CBDC, or an investment signal. Judge each effort on its own disclosed status.
Primary sources
- BIS/G20 TechSprint 2023 report (PDF)
- Boston Fed Project Hamilton Phase 1 executive summary
- MIT DCI Project Hamilton / OpenCBDC
- Boston Fed Project Hamilton Phase 1 whitepaper (PDF)
- OpenCBDC transaction processor (GitHub)
- World Bank CBDC interoperability (PDF)
- World Bank Blockchain Interoperability working paper (PDF)
- World Bank: remittances and the Interledger Protocol
Common questions
Are FortisNet, Project Hamilton, and Interledger the same system?
No. They are three separate efforts. FortisNet is a commercial interoperability and atomic-settlement provider, Project Hamilton was a Boston Fed and MIT research project on a hypothetical U.S. digital dollar, and Interledger is an open protocol for moving value across networks. They share the theme of interoperability but are not a single connected network.
Is Project Hamilton a U.S. central bank digital currency?
No. Project Hamilton was research into the technical feasibility of a hypothetical CBDC, run by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and MIT’s Digital Currency Initiative. It built open-source software (OpenCBDC-tx) and concluded in 2023. Building the software was explicitly not a decision to issue a digital dollar.
What does Interledger actually do?
Interledger is an open protocol that lets payments move across different ledgers and payment networks. It splits a payment into small packets routed through intermediaries called connectors, so systems using different technologies or currencies can transfer value between each other.
What is FortisNet known for?
FortisNet is an interoperability and atomic-settlement infrastructure provider. It was introduced at SWIFT’s SIBOS conference in October 2022, won the Reserve Bank of India and NPCI HARBINGER 2023 challenge, and was shortlisted in the BIS G20 TechSprint. Its throughput claims are vendor-stated and not independently audited here.
Does this involve XRP or Ripple?
Not directly. This material is about interoperability research, a commercial DLT provider, and an open payments protocol. It should not be read as a Ripple endorsement, a production CBDC deployment, or an investment signal.
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.
