DFNS now supports HashSphere with full Tier-1 integration. This brings Hashgraph’s private, permissioned network into the DFNS platform as a fully operational environment for banks, asset managers, and payment providers building compliant stablecoin, payments, and tokenization workflows on permissioned infrastructure, while keeping a path to the public Hedera network, in addition to other public or private chains.
What is HashSphere?
HashSphere is a private, permissioned distributed ledger network built with Hedera technology developed by Hashgraph (formerly Swirlds Labs). It offers a fully managed or self-hosted environment for enterprises that need to keep sensitive data private and comply with regulatory requirements. It is purpose-built for institutions in highly regulated sectors that find a public ledger difficult to adopt directly.
The core idea is to give institutions the control of a private network without giving up Hedera’s performance, while offering regulatory compliance, transaction privacy, and interoperability with Hedera’s enterprise-grade public network.
Key characteristics include:
- Flexible adoption path: HashSphere meets enterprises wherever they are in their blockchain journey, giving organizations the flexibility to begin with smaller private, permissioned deployments and expand into broader interoperable ecosystems as their needs evolve.
- Permissioned by design: access is limited to verified, approved institutions, ensuring privacy and supporting enterprise compliance needs.
- EVM compatibility: support for EVM languages such as Solidity, so developers can deploy smart contracts and applications using familiar tooling
- Access to core Hedera services and tooling: including the Token Service for digital asset issuance, the Consensus Service for tamper-proof event logging, and smart contract capabilities.
- Hashgraph consensus: the same consensus efficiency and finality as Hedera’s public ledger, with all records confined to a closed, permissioned environment
- Data residency and privacy: blends the data residency requirements and control of private networks with the benefits of Hedera’s enterprise-grade technology
- Governance flexibility: while Hedera’s public network is managed by the global Hedera Council, a private HashSphere network can define its own governance model, validator structure, participation requirements, and operational controls.
- Public interoperability: HashSphere integrates with the Hedera mainnet and other public or private networks through CLPR, the Cross-Ledger Protocol developed by Hashgraph, enabling the movement of data, tokens, and messages across chains.
Why DFNS and HashSphere are a strong match for banks going onchain
A permissioned ledger answers one question for a bank: where do my transactions settle, privately and compliantly? It does not, on its own, answer the harder one: how do I actually operate financial products on this ledger with the controls my board, auditors, and regulators expect? That is the gap DFNS fills, and it is why this is more than a wallet integration.
DFNS is not only a wallet and key management layer. It is a core banking platform for digital assets, the operational control plane between a bank’s business logic and the networks it runs on. On top of any network it supports, including HashSphere, DFNS provides:
- Wallet-as-a-Service as the account layer for custody, payments, treasury, and tokenization
- Transaction Management covering construction, simulation, broadcast, rebroadcast, and lifecycle tracking, not just signing
- Policy Engine enforcing limits, allowlists, quorums, roles, and ABI-aware approvals before any signature
- Workflows that import a bank’s existing approval chains, triggers, and fallback paths
- Treasury and Tokenization modules for managing balances and servicing tokenized assets across their full lifecycle
- Governance and compliance sitting directly in the execution path, with audit evidence regulators will accept
And critically, DFNS’ key management service works across MPC, HSMs including IBM, Thales, and Securosys, TEEs, offline signers, and BYOK. It can be deployed as SaaS, hybrid, or fully on-premise, allowing each bank to align its signing and custody model with its own risk appetite, operating model, and regulatory requirements instead of being forced into a single fixed architecture.
Put together, the combination is clean: HashSphere provides the private, compliant, Hedera-grade network a bank settles on, and DFNS provides the core banking system that runs accounts, controls, approvals, and asset servicing on top of it, with the same control plane extending to the public Hedera network when the bank is ready to expand its use case. Two systems built to institutional standards, meeting where regulated finance is actually heading.
Full tier-1 support on DFNS
DFNS provides full tier-1 support for HashSphere, giving institutions access to a complete, programmable infrastructure layer:
- Wallet creation: instant provisioning via API or dashboard
- Native transfers: send and receive native assets on the network
- Token transfers: support for tokens on HashSphere, including stablecoins and tokenized assets
- Smart contract execution: interact with onchain applications and financial workflows
- Transaction broadcast: submit transactions to the network
- Secure signing: operations run through DFNS’ key management with no single point of failure
- Balance retrieval: query balances across wallets
- Webhook notifications: real-time transaction and balance updates
All operations are secured by DFNS’ zero trust architecture, with SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, ISO 27017, and ISO 27018 certifications. DFNS operates strictly as a technology provider. Custody remains under the client’s own regulatory perimeter and licensing framework.
Use Cases
HashSphere’s combination of permissioned access, EVM compatibility, Hedera-grade performance, and public interoperability makes it a strong environment for regulated financial workflows. Examples include:
- Cross-border stablecoin payments: settle compliant, low-cost cross-border transactions between verified institutions, with the option to bridge to public Hedera
- Tokenized assets: issue and service tokenized financial instruments using the Hedera Token Service within a permissioned, KYC-gated environment
- Compliant onchain operations: run financial workflows that require restricted participation, data residency, and internal governance, with audit trails built in
- Hybrid public-private architectures: keep sensitive operations on a private network while merging or splitting tokens with the public Hedera network as regulation and use cases evolve
- Internal settlement and treasury: modernize internal workflows and pilot digital asset infrastructure in a controlled, governed environment
For institutions that need the control of a private network today and a credible path to public rails tomorrow, HashSphere on DFNS gives one unified core banking layer across both.
HashSphere joins 60+ blockchain networks supported on DFNS, powering digital asset operations for 400+ institutional clients worldwide.
Get started
- Learn more about onchain core banking: dfns.co
- Explore the platform and documentation: docs.dfns.co
- Start building today on DFNS: app.dfns.io/get-started
- Talk to our team about HashSphere: sales@dfns.co