Built with Hedera technology, HashSphere powered real-world settlement use cases alongside Australia’s national payments infrastructure
Sydney, March 3, 2026 – Hashgraph, an enterprise software firm building trusted distributed ledger solutions for regulated institutions, confirmed that HashSphere, its private, permissioned blockchain network built with Hedera technology, operated as part of the core infrastructure for Project Acacia.
Led by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), Project Acacia is Australia’s national research initiative examining the role of digital money in wholesale tokenized asset markets. The project brings together financial institutions, regulators and technology providers to test how new forms of digital money can operate safely within Australia’s existing financial system.
Over the course of the project, 24 use cases were developed and tested, with 19 of those use cases involving real-world transactions across asset classes such as fixed income, private markets, and trade receivables.
HashSphere was selected to support specific use cases due to its suitability for regulated environments. Specifically, HashSphere lets institutions issue, manage, and move digital assets on a private network while maintaining interoperability with public blockchains when required. With EVM equivalence, HashSphere enables developers to build with existing Solidity code and established tooling, allowing organisations to meet regulatory and compliance requirements without sacrificing performance or flexibility.
Hashgraph collaborated closely with Australian Payments Plus (AP+), Australia’s domestic payments scheme operator and Hedera Council member. Within Project Acacia, AP+ led two use cases and enabled a third, focused on integrating tokenized money with Australia’s existing payments infrastructure, including the New Payments Platform (NPP). Rather than focusing on creating parallel settlement systems, the project explored how digital assets could interoperate with established national payment rails.
“Project Acacia proves that digital money can work in the real economy, under real regulatory oversight,” said Rob Allen, Head of Hedera Enterprise Adoption Team (HEAT) at Hashgraph. “HashSphere was designed for exactly this kind of environment. It gives regulated institutions a trusted foundation to build, test, and scale digital asset solutions with confidence.”
The solution stack deployed within the project included:
- HashSphere – private tokenized asset infrastructure
- AP+ interchange and settlement coordination services
- HGraph blockchain interoperability layer
- Institutional wallet infrastructure provided by Utila
Together, these components enabled secure and auditable movement of tokenized value across networks, while preserving integration with existing payment and settlement systems.
By running real money pilots rather than theoretical models, Project Acacia is helping regulators and industry participants understand what works in practice. Insights from the project will inform future policy and commercial adoption of digital assets in Australia.
