A hardware design for a main data transformation component is verified. The main data transformation component is representable as a hierarchical set of data transformation components which includes (i) leaf data transformation components which do not have children, and (ii) parent data transformation components which comprise one or more child data transformation components. For each of the leaf data transformation components, it is verified that an instantiation of the hardware design for the leaf data transformation component generates an expected output transaction. For each of the parent data transformation components, it is formally verified that an instantiation of an abstracted hardware design generates an expected output transaction in response to each of test input transactions. The abstracted hardware design for the parent data transformation component represents each of the child data transformation components of the parent data transformation component with a corresponding abstracted component that for a specific input transaction to the child data transformation component produces a specific output transaction with a causal deterministic relationship to the specific input transaction.