Articles related to blockchain, bitcoin, Ethereum, decentralized and distributed application, blockchain app development, dapps, smart contracts, cryptocurrencies.

Posts

Do traditional exchanges see Blockchain as an opportunity?

Distributed ledgers technology also known as Blockchain, offers a new way to data management and sharing that is being used to propose solving many inefficiencies affecting the financial industry. Technology experts, Fintech start-ups, banks and market infrastructure providers are working on underlying technologies and its potential use in the industry. However the journey of such transformation may take long. In this post we will focus on the benefits and architectural changes Blockchain could bring to capital market, and some example from such appliances across exchanges around the world.

The potential benefits of Blockchain technologies could cover different process within different stages in capital markets. In order to expose why capital markets would pursue to Blockchain technologies its worth taking a look at the benefits across pre-trade, trade, post-trade and security servicing.

Pre-trade:

Blockchain technology will establish more transparency on verification of holdings. Additionally it reduces the credit exposure and making Know-your-customer way simpler.

Trade:

For this stage, Blockchain technologies provide a more secure, real-time transaction matching and a prompt irrevocable settlement. Blockchain could also help automating the reporting and more transparent supervision for market authorities, we could add higher standards for anti-money laundering.

Post-trade:

In this regard it eliminates the demand for central clearing for real time cash transactions, reducing collateral requirements. Blockchain technology enables quicker novation and effective post-trade processing.

Securities and custody servicing:

Distributed asset ledgers with flat accounting structures could remove some of the role which custodians and sub-custodians play today. Custodians’ function might change to that of a ‘keeper of the keys’, managing holdings data and ensuring automatic securities servicing operations are done correctly. To that end we could also add advantages such as common reference data, simplification of fun servicing, accounting, allocation and administration.

Nasdaq has become the forefront of blockchain revolution, they have and are currently involved with many blockchain jobs. To name these endeavors, it started with Nasdaq Linq blockchain ledger technology. Linq is the primary platform in a recognized financial services firm to show how asset trading could be managed digitally through the usage of blockchain-based platforms. Nasdaq has continued more to blockchain, showing that, it is working to develop a trial utilizing the Nasdaq OMX Tallinn Stock Exchange in Estonia which will discover blockchain technology being used as a way to reduce obstacles preventing investors by engaging in shareholder voting. The intention is to boost efficiency in the processing of purchases and sales of fund units and also to make a device ledger — a place which currently is primarily characterized by manual patterns, longterm cycles and newspaper driven processes.

Read more about Nasdaq activities in Blockchain here.

London Stock Exchange developed to simplify the tracking and management of shareholding information, the new system plans to make a distributed shared registry comprising a list of all shareholder trades, helping to open up new opportunities for investing and trading.

Read more about LSE and IBM activities in Blockchain here.

Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), is all about the replacement of this system that underpins post-trade procedures of Australia’s money equity marketplace, known as CHESS (the Clearing House Electronic Subregister System). ASX is working on a prototype of a post-trade platform for the cash equity market using Blockchain. This initial phase of work was completed in mid-2016. In December 2017 ASX completed its own analysis and assessment of the technology which included:

  • Comprehensive functional testing of the critical clearing and settlement functions currently performed by CHESS
  • Comprehensive non-functional testing (scalability, security and performance requirements) for a replacement system when deployed in a permissioned private network
  • A broad industry engagement process to capture users input on the desired features and functions of a replacement solution
  • Third party security reviews of the Digital Asset DLT based system.

Read more about ASX procedure here.

The Korea Exchange (KRX), South Korea’s sole securities market operator, has established a new service where equity shares of startup businesses may be traded on the open marketplace. The Coinstack platform will offer record and authentication options for your KSM by checking against client references which have already been provided to the platform by Korean banks such as JB Bank, KISA, Lottecard, Paygate in addition to others.

Deutsche Börse Group has developed a theory for riskless transfer of commercial bank funding through an infrastructure based on distributed ledger technology. By combining blockchain technology using its proven post-trade infrastructure, Deutsche Börse aims to achieve efficiencies while at exactly the same time investigating possible new business opportunities enabled by this technology.

Read more about Deutsche Börse Group activities in Blockchain here.

Japan Exchange Group: IBM had teamed up with Japan Exchange Group, which works the Tokyo market, to begin experimenting with blockchain technology for clearing and other operations. IBM says it expect the technology will reduce the cost, complexity and speed of settlement and trading procedures.

 

Blockchain meetup sponsored by Empirica, Wroclaw

Monday June 19th a beautiful sunny day in IT-friendly Wroclaw, tech start-ups and cryptocurrency enthusiast gather together at IT corner Tech meetup, sponsored by Empirica.

The event was planned to focus on key areas of current trends in Blockchain and Ethereum.

The event began with Mr Wojciech Rokosz, Ardeo CEO presentation. The session was dedicated to introduction to the economics of token. Explaining the new changes and updates we are and we will face in our economy with this huge entrance of virtual currencies.

The event later carried on with Mr Marek Kotewicz on introduction to Blockchain, Bitcoin and Ethereum. The session was summarizing the differences between Bitcoin and Ethereum.

The third and last part of the event was conducted with Mr Tomek Drwga, Blockchain meetup organizer,  diving deeper into smart contracts and programming ( introduction to Solidity) for Ethereum.

The event ended with open discussion between the audience and speakers, and visitors were served with beverages.

 

A Blockchain based capital market systems

A broad range of innovators are creating solutions using blockchain technology. The most common are active from the ecosystem of cryptocurrencies (and related tools such as wallets). These basically provide a form of retail payments. A variety of blockchain applications across fiscal services are being contemplated, particularly about wholesale payments/correspondent banking, trade finance and other forms of trade banking. In this post, we focus on programs from capital markets and associated activities like post-trade and securities servicing.

A Blockchain based capital markets system:

Agreeing and preventing datasets of financial obligations and ownership forms the simple core of capital markets operations. This generates the continual need to reconcile data with massive systems and procedure copying, leading to high prices and protracted time to perform tasks. Could blockchain be the structural change the marketplace requires?

If we started from a blank sheet of paper now, with accessibility to efficient, well-architecture blockchain technology, we would anticipate the industry structure and processes to seem very different. The listing of each security would be held onto a flat accounting basis – that is, with multiple levels of beneficial ownership in a single ledger. There would be no requirement to run data normalization, reconcile internal systems, or consent exposures and obligations. We would have standardized procedures and solutions, shared benchmark information, standardized processing capabilities (for instance, reconciliations), close real-time data and enhanced understanding of counter party worthiness. For privileged participants such as labs, we’d have transparent data on holdings, among many other improvements. To bring this ideal scenario to life, we put out under a stylized ‘capital markets utopia’ based on blockchains and smart contracts.

 Securities transaction

Automatically verifying that another has the means to finish the transaction. (by way of example, Client A demonstrably owns the safety on the asset ledger, and Client B demonstrably owns cash on the cash ledger). Client A and Client B collectively ‘sign’ the trade by applying their private keys to unlock their advantage or money, and then by transferring ownership to the recipient via their public key. The signed transaction is broadcast into the dispersed blockchain ledger to be validated and recorded in the next update, along with a simultaneous update to some money ledger used in blockchain.

Asset servicing

Actually, securities themselves could be unbundled so that the individual cash flows, and also the rights they encapsulate, might be moved individually. Mandatory occasions and distributions could be handled via smart contracts using blockchain technology, embedded inside the securities. Complex events can be structured as easy Delivery Versus Payment (DVP) trades between investors and issuers.

With horizontal accounting, the numerous custody layers are shrunk to a single function. Presently, a single security may be held in as many as five or six layers of custody (stockbroker, sell-side lender, local custodian, global custodian, CSD, etc.) each with their own accounting viewpoints. Here the advantage is held by means of a type of wallet supplier recording the last beneficial owner.

Derivative trade

The utopian set up for derivatives represents the largest change. In the first case, unbundled securities could enable new approaches to financial technology, allowing specialists to construct bespoke instruments consisting of individual cash flows which meet precise needs in terms of timing and credit risk. These tools could be financed by issuers promoting their own instruments that fit the cash flows they expect to achieve, in essence producing swaps without the need for balance sheet intermediation.

Additionally, derivatives with blockchain will be created as preprogrammed smart contracts, catching the duties of both counter parties (for instance, margin agreements or swap requirements).

(CCP) would continue to permit traders to net their exposures. Adding collateral into the CCP in the shape of initial and variation margin could be achieved either by escrowing cash on a money ledger, or by simply devoting funds held on other asset ledgers to some security ledger. Later on, if a central bank problems publicly available digital money on demand, it might allow traders to pledge that the eligible part of their inventory to the central bank and utilize central bank money security when trading.
The smart contract may automatically recompute exposures by referencing agreed external information sources that recalculate version margin. Inter operable derivative and collateral ledgers would automatically allow the contract to call extra collateral units on asset ledgers to encourage these needs. At maturity, a closing net obligation is computed by the smart contract, Along with a payment instruction automatically generated in the cash ledger, closing Out the deal.

A Basic Idea behind Ethereum’s smart contracts

The Ethereum platform was originally conceived in November 2013 with the goal of producing a more generalized blockchain platform, combining together the idea of public economic consensus via proof of work (or finally proof of stake) together with the abstraction power of a stateful Turing-complete digital machine so as to permit application developers to much more easily create applications that benefit from the decentralization and safety attributes of blockchains, and especially avoid the need to create a new blockchain for each new program. Sometime past blockchain protocols can be viewed as single purpose tools, such as pocket calculators, or at best multi-function tools like Swiss army knives, Ethereum is your smartphone of blockchains: a universal stage where, whatever you want to build, you can just construct it as an “app”, along with Ethereum consumers will be able to gain from it immediately without downloading some new special applications.

The design:

All blockchains have a notion of a history – that the set of all previous transactions and blocks and also the order in which they happened – along with the state – “currently relevant” information that determines whether or not a given transaction is legitimate and what the condition after processing a trade will be. Blockchain protocols also have an idea of a state transition rule: given what the state had been earlier, and given a particular transaction, (I) is the transaction valid, and (ii) what would the state of the transaction?

We can offer an example using Bitcoin . In Bitcoin, the state is the set of account balances (eg. address 39BaMQCphFXyYAvcoGpeKtnptLJ9v6cdFY contains 522.11790015 bitcoins, address 375zAYokrLtBVv6bY47bf2YdJH1EYsgyNR has 375 bitcoins…). The state transition function takes a transaction comprising a sender address, a destination address and a worth and asks: (I) is the trade correctly cryptographically signed by the sender, and (ii) does the sender account contain enough bitcoins to send? If either answer is unfavorable, the trade is invalid and cannot be included in a block, ie. If a block contains a transaction that is invalid under the current state, then that block is blown off from the network2 . If both answers are positive, then the transaction value is subtracted in the sender’s balance and added to that of the receiver.

In Ethereum, the layout is somewhat more complex.The state stores the contract’s code, as well as the contract’s storage, a key-value database.

A transaction in Ethereum specifies (along with other Information which will later be clarified as demanded) a destination address, a number of ether to transact plus a “data” area which theoretically can include any information (and also a sender address, although this is implicit from the touch and therefore isn’t specified explicitly). When a trade is sent to an EOA, or a not-yet-existent accounts, then it only acts as a move of ether, and serves no other function. If a transaction is delivered to a contract, however, the contract’s code runs. This code gets the ability to:

● Read the transaction data.

● Read the quantity of ether sent in the transaction

● Read and write into the contract’s own storage.

● Read environment variables (eg. timestamp, block Difficulty, previous block hashes)

Basically, one can think of a contract as being a kind of “virtual object” stored at the Ethereum country, but one which can maintain its own internal persistent memory, and which has the right to execute the very same sorts of activities and have the very same kinds of connections with other contracts which outside users may. An internal trade is a transaction created by a contract; such as a regular “outside” transaction, in addition, it has an implicit sender, a destination, a quantity of ether, and message information, and if an inner transaction is sent into a contract then that contract’s code runs. Upon exiting execution, the contract’s code gets the ability to return zero or more bytes of data, allowing internal trades to also be utilized to “inquire” other contracts for specific information. A new contract can be created either by a transaction, by placing the arrangement’s code in the transaction data rather than specifying a destination address, or from within of contract code itself via the CREATE opcode.

In simple terms, instead of enforcing one specific set of rules targeted toward one specific program, Ethereum allows users to write apps specifying whatever rules they want, upload the programs to the blockchain, and also the blockchain will translate the rules for them. On the people Ethereum blockchain, this contract mechanism has been used in many ways:

● As “smart contracts”  (like issuer-backed assets and ether)

● As registries for an on-blockchain domain name system

● As accounts that represent an individual and business but multisig

● As “software libraries”, allowing code to be written and published to the blockchain once and then used by anyone else

Smart contracts have their own addresses, and so can function as owners of electronic assets in the exact same way that users may; when a contract does “own” digital resources, that implies that (I) just the contract’s code implementing can send the advantage to another party, and (ii) each party that sees and can check the blockchain is aware that the advantage is under this app’s control.

For example, one can implement a trust-free trade of asset A for asset B by having the owner of asset A send the asset into a program whose code is roughly “if I receive asset B within 24 hours, I will send asset A to the sender and send asset B to my creator, otherwise I will return asset A to my creator”. The owner of asset B can see that asset A is under the control of the contract, and so knows that if they send asset B into the contract as well, the contract will execute the trade fairly and correctly. Contracts do not have “owners”; once the original owner of asset A sends the asset into the contract, they no longer have any way to manipulate the contract to get it back, they can only wait for either the trade to succeed and for them to receive asset B or for the trade not to succeed within 24 hours at which point they will automatically get asset A back.

How does Blockchain work and how can it change our lives?

How can Blockchain tech work?

Before attempting to understand how blockchain ledgers operate, it might be worth having a look at traditional ledgers. For centuries, banks have utilized ledgers to keep databases of account transactions, and governments have utilized them to keep records of property ownership. There’s a central authority — that the bank or government office — that manages changes of all transactions, so that they could identify who owns what, at any given time. This allows them to check whether new transactions are valid, that the same $1 isn’t spent twice and houses aren’t offered by people who don’t own them.

Since users trust the manager of this ledger to check the trades properly, people can buy and sell from each other even when they have not met before and don’t trust each other. The middleman also controls access to information regarding the ledger. They may decide that everyone can find out who owns a construction, but only account holders can check their balance. These ledgers are centralized (there’s a middleman, reliable by all customers, who has total control over the system and mediates every trade) and black-boxed (that the functioning of the ledger and its information aren’t completely visible to its customers).

Digitization has made these ledgers faster and simpler to use, however they remain centralized and black-boxed. Blockchain delivers exactly the same record-keeping performance but without a centralized architecture. The issue is how it may be sure that a trade is legitimate when there isn’t any central authority to check it. Blockchains fix this problem by decentralizing the ledger, so that each user retains a copy of it. Everyone can request that any transaction be added into the blockchain, but transactions are only accepted if most of the users agree that it’s legitimate, e.g. that the request comes from the authorized person, that the house seller has not already sold the home, and the buyer has not already spent the cash. This checking is performed reliably and automatically on behalf of each user, creating a extremely fast and secure ledger system that is remarkably tamper-proof.

Each new transaction to be recorded is bundled together with other brand new trades to a ‘block’, which is inserted as the latest link on a lengthy ‘chain’ of historic trades. This chain forms the blockchain ledger that’s held by all users. This work is known as ‘mining’. Anybody can become a miner and compete to be the first to solve the intricate mathematical problem of creating a legitimate encrypted block of trades to add to the blockchain.

You will find numerous means of incentivizing people to do this job. Most frequently, the first miner to make a valid block and then add it to the series is rewarded with the amount of fees for its transactions. Fees are currently about $0.10 per transaction, but cubes are added regularly and contain thousands of transactions.

Miners may also receive new money that’s created and put into circulation as an inflation mechanism. Including a new block to the series means updating the ledger that’s held by all users. Users just accept a brand new block when it has been verified that all of its trades are valid. If a discrepancy is found, the block is reversed. The block is additional and will remain there as a permanent public record. No user can eliminate it. There can be no ‘imitation ledger’ since all users have their own real version to check against. These blockchains are described as ‘permission-less’, since there’s no special authority that could deny permission to participate in the checking and adding of transactions.

It’s also possible to install ‘permissioned’ blockchains, in which a limited group of actors retain the capability to access, assess and add transactions to the ledger. This enables ‘mainstream’ actors such as banks and governments to keep substantial control over their blockchains.

How Blockchain technology could change our own lives

Blockchains are a remarkably clear and decentralized way of recording lists of trades. Their best-known use is for digital currencies like Bitcoin, which declared blockchain technologies to the world using a headline-grabbing 1000 percent increase in value at the course of one month at 2013. This bubble quickly burst, but steady expansion since 2015 means Bitcoins are currently valued higher than previously. There are many different means of utilizing blockchains to make new currencies. countless such currencies are made with different features and aims.

How Blockchain-based currency transactions create fast, economical and secure public records means that they also can be utilized for several non-financial tasks, like casting votes in elections or demonstrating that a document existed at a particular moment.

Blockchains are particularly well suited to situations where it is imperative to understand ownership histories. As an example, they can help manage supply chains better, to provide certainty that diamonds are ethically sourced, that clothes aren’t made in sweatshops which champagne comes from Champagne. They could help finally resolve the problem of video and music piracy, while allowing digital media to be legitimately bought, sold, inherited and given away secondhand such as novels, video and vinyl tapes. They also present opportunities in all sorts of public services such as health and welfare obligations and, in the frontier of both blockchain development, are self-executing contracts paving the way for companies that run themselves with no human intervention. Blockchains shift some management over daily interactions with technology away from fundamental elites, redistributing it among users. In doing so, they create systems more transparent and, perhaps, much more democratic. Nevertheless, this won’t likely not result in a revolution. Indeed, the authorities and business giants investing heavily in blockchain development and research aren’t trying to make themselves obsolete, but to enhance their services.

There are additionally some wider issues to consider. For instance, blockchain’s transparency is good for matters of public record such as land registries, but what about bank accounts and other sensitive data? It is possible (albeit just occasionally and with significant effort), to recognize the people associated with transactions. This could compromise their privacy and anonymity. While some blockchains do provide full anonymity, some sensitive information simply shouldn’t be distributed in this way. Nevertheless, although blockchains aren’t the solution for every issue and even though they will not revolutionize every aspect of our own lives, they might have a substantial effect in several places and it is crucial to be ready for the challenges and opportunities they pose.

 

A brief guide to Initial Coin Offerings (ICO)

Initial​ ​Coin​ Offerings​ ​(ICO)

The introduction of Bitcoin in 2009 gave us resources and infrastructure to transact primitive digital tokens of value (bitcoin in the event of the Bitcoin blockchain) over the open public internet without trusted intermediaries. However, so as to create new tokens one either needed to scale and deploy a new blockchain network (likely forked from Bitcoin), or problem tokens on top of an existing blockchain network like Bitcoin (through metadata encoded into raw transactions). The former was an uphill struggle due to challenges of scaling and achieving network effects to get a new blockchain, and the latter was challenging due to the complexities of trying to encode sufficient information related to new tokens into raw Bitcoin transactions. Neither model was perfect.

But with the introduction of Ethereum in 2015 arrived the the Ethereum blockchain not only provided the infrastructure for transacting primitive digital tokens (ether in this case) but also provided the capability for easily creating and autonomously managing other secondary electronic tokens of value within the open public internet without reliable intermediaries.

Applying this concept of smart contracts, which can be effectively applications running a top a decentralized network, tokens can be generated and allocated to users, and made to be readily tradable. This process of creating tokens and distributing them to customers in exchange for a network’s primitive electronic token (cryptocurrency) is called an ICO process, and can be viewed as a novel distribution channel for assets.

Not all tokens are created equal

This post Isn’t supposed to be an introduction to the technically rich world of cryptography, blockchains and consensus mechanisms, for which there are numerous excellent entry level resources. However, the key point to bear in mind is that secondary tokens are not like primitive tokens (cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ether) that are inherent to the “structural integrity” of a blockchain network.

Open peer-to-peer worth transfer networks, for example Bitcoin or Ethereum, need to endure complex attack vectors within an open hostile environment – where all parties (hosting or accessing the community) are assumed to be self interested and focused on optimizing their own value. In this scenario the key question is how do all parties be incentivized to work for the greater good of securing the community while fulfilling their self-interest. This leads us into the real innovation of this blockchain network, the primitive token (or cryptocurrency).

In addition to being the subject of transaction between parties On the network (the users), the crude token is also used to incentive key parties competing to reach consensus (the miners) as quickly as possible on the state of this blockchain ledger (i.e. who owns what primitive token). The reward for securing the network and reaching consensus is either new supply of crude tokens or transaction fees. In this model, trust is made from mistrust through expending energy in the mining process, which makes the violation of the “sanctity of the blockchain ledger” costly and economically unfavorable to the option of procuring the system and being rewarded in the native store of value for the effort of doing this . It is a self-contained system that is simple and beautiful in its implementation, and requires no more controls and rules than are necessary.

Here you can see the core purpose and the unique nature of a cryptocurrency, and why it is fundamental to a blockchain network: cryptocurrency is the atomic element where the open public blockchain network is forged. On the other hand a secondary token, that is made in addition to a blockchain network, is merely a representation of some “property rights” that may (or may not) be external to the blockchain e.g. “real world assets” or access to products/services.

Inherent blockchain and its cryptocurrency to create and issue (through an ICO procedure) secondary tokens for any purpose, but this only uses the open public blockchain as an independent “custody or notarization” data layer.

ICO and token issuance

Among the most obvious and natural use cases for ICO based Secondary token issuances is to represent some form of conventional security e.g. equity, debt, participation in profit sharing, etc.. In addition to issuance, allocation and transferability being programmed into an immutable smart arrangement, one can also predefine a set of events like cash flow rules which could be triggered either at set times or by particular external events. There are a number of reasons why a public blockchain infrastructure is logical for the issuance and management of financial securities, which are mostly associated with custody regulations around how client money and asset are managed through their life cycle.

However, since the “offer and sale” of securities is in and Of itself highly controlled, many models have been devised by startups to allow the issuance of tokens through an ICO distribution version whilst not falling afoul of securities regulations. As well as the question around whether a token is a security or not there are also lots of other unanswered questions related to tax of capital gains and KYC/AML rules. These are a few of the regulatory and statutory financial considerations which are currently an ongoing area of development and appraisal.

Recent SEC investigative report, these aspects will be the most crucial on how ICO And the issued tokens are classified by regulators globally.

Implications of Blockchain in Securities industry

The exploration of Blockchain applications in the securities Industry has already begun and seems possible to pick up steam in the next several years. Many financial institutions have created in-house teams and study labs to construct and examine Blockchain networks, or are working together with third party sellers specializing in this space. In addition, companies have sought to participate in collaborative efforts with consortia to develop a frequent Blockchain frame and make industry standards.

The used cases of Blockchain applications are between the equity, debt and derivative markets. Since the implementation of these Blockchain applications advances, issues are being raised concerning how processes involving Blockchain fit within the present regulatory framework. In light of the trends, this section highlights some key factors linked to Blockchain execution and regulation.

Implementation Considerations

Developing Blockchain applications in the securities Industry can present many challenges. In trying to overcome those challenges, some of the essential considerations for market participants in executing a Blockchain network may consist of governance, operational architecture and community security.

Governance

One of the key governance principles of the Bitcoin Network Was to establish a “trustless” environment open to the general public, where no single party is responsible for, or enabled with, governing and operating the network. Although this kind of network may offer certain advantages like providing a decentralized system which isn’t dependent on any particular party to operate, it may also pose some vulnerability in case it contributes to inefficient management of the machine. As an instance, recent events have shown that lack of a central governing body for its evolving Bitcoin Network has generated concerns for the system, as participants try to ascertain an approach to handle greater transaction volume. Therefore, a Blockchain network dependent on the use of a trustless system, where no party is responsible or liable for the appropriate operation of the machine, may pose risks to investors and markets. Many market participants are working to use private Blockchain networks using a governance structure that takes into consideration that participants in the network are generally known and trusted parties.

When setting up or engaging in a private Blockchain Network, in which multiple organizations across the sector are involved, a number of the first governance questions that need to be answered relate to the operation of the network and deciding that bears responsibility for it. Below are the types of questions that market participants may wish to consider when creating a governance structure to get a Blockchain network.

· Can the governance arrangement for the Blockchain system be determined by a single entity or a set of firms? How would the pursuits of end-users, that aren’t participants on the community, be represented?

· Who would be responsible for ensuring adherence by amateurs to the prerequisites established for the Blockchain network, and how could this be ran?

· Who would be accountable for the day-to-day operation of this system and resolving any technical problems on the network?

· Who would be responsible for setting and maintaining a affordable business continuity plan (BCP) to your network, to address some unanticipated emergencies or significant business disruptions?

· How would any conflicts of interest in the performance of or participation on the community be addressed?

· How would mistakes or omissions about the Blockchain be mirrored or rectified?

Operational Structure

A Vital concern for market participants in executing a Blockchain system is discovering the operational structure of the network. The operational structure of a Blockchain system would normally include creating a framework for: (1) network participant access and related on-boarding and off-boarding processes; (2) trade validation; (3) asset representation; and (4) data and transparency demands. Following are a few locations that market participants may want to consider when creating such a framework.

On-boarding, Off-boarding and accessibility:

It is vital for a Blockchain system to launch, as portion of its operational infrastructure, the standards and processes for establishing and keeping participating members and determining their level of access. Especially, in developing a Blockchain community, applicable parties may Want to think about how they would:

· Establish eligibility standards for participants to gain access to the network;

· Establish a vetting and on-boarding procedure for new participants, including establishing an identity verification process and executing proper user arrangements prior to on-boarding;

· Grow an off-boarding process for participants that may be non-compliant or disqualified for violating securities laws, rules and regulations or for violating system rules; and establish exclusion criteria to discover previous participants which might have been disqualified;

· Memorialize the terms of engagement and code of conduct required from all participants;

· Establish varying degrees of access for different player groups (e.g., direct network participants . indirect users running transactions via direct participants)–that might include restricted access to certain data sets, and even constraints on ability to read or write about the shared ledger; and when the network includes global participants or entities from different countries, it may be desired to present special focus on regulatory requirements in those various jurisdictions, particularly as it relates to privacy and information sharing; and

· Determine which sort of access would be given to regulators.

Transaction validation:

As previously described different kinds of methodologies before launching a transaction identification methodology, network operators are most likely to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of each methodology. In doing this analysis, some prospective questions network operators might desire to consider are mentioned below.

· If consensus-based, would it take a proof-of-concept or would it be an easy consensus algorithm? How much latency and sophistication would that add to the validation process? What is the risk of collusion by multiple parties to validate a fraudulent transaction?

· In case single-node verifier (i.e., one single node will be responsible for confirming all transactions), how would that verifier be determined? Is the simplicity and speed of a single-node verifier value the concentration of risk? What would be the backup or recovery process in the event the single-node is unavailable or endangered?

· How would the amount of nodes needed for verification be determined? If other nodes or arbitrary nodes are put up as verifiers, how could the order be established? Does this procedure expose the network to possible dangers from a number of nodes?

· What procedure will the system embrace to rectify or correct any erroneous entry that may be recorded on the shared ledgers?

Asset representation:

To the extent an asset is represented on a Blockchain network, Operators will need to determine how those assets will be based on the community. Following are a few factors operators may want to take into account in the investigation.

Will assets be directly issued and digitally represented on The system? Or would they be issued in traditional form and subsequently tokenized on the community? Would the network consider both kinds of asset representation?

• If tokenized, what extra security dangers and complexities are posed? How would any loss or theft of the conventional off-chain advantage be managed? How would asset fluctuations (e.g., stock splits and conversions) be handled?

• Will the network only permit new advantage issuance or can it allow on-boarding of present assets?

How would money be represented on this network? Industry participants are contemplating a variety of versions to ease the cash aspect of a transaction settlement. For instance, in a recent effort, a few banks are tinkering to create a virtual “settlement coin.”

• If cash-backed settlement tokens are utilized, would these tokens be termed as virtual money? Could there likely be a scenario where multiple such native tokens are made by various networks or companies? In that case, are they tradable?

• If fiat money (i.e., money that’s created by the authorities of a country to be utilized as cash) is used and settlement happens off the system through a conventional cash payment process, how, when, and from whom will the trade and asset transfer be recorded on the network?

• How will a participant’s ability to fulfill the money obligation be determined? Can a deposit be accumulated from network participants to be utilised in the event of non-payment? How will this type of deposit be calculated?

Read more about Blockchain based capital market systems here.

Three use cases of Smart Contracts in Financial services

Savings and upsides from decreasing syndicated loans settlement time

While the High-Yield Bond transactions are settled in more than three days, the settlement interval for leveraged loans frequently extends to almost 20 days. This creates increased danger and a liquidity challenge from the leveraged loan market, hampering its growth and attractiveness.
Since 2008, the global loan market has witnessed negative gain, whereas the High-Yield Bond market grew by 11 percent. We assume that smart contracts can reduce the delay in procedures such as documentation, buyer and vendor affirmation and assignment arrangement, and KYC, AML and FATCA checks, with the assistance of a permissioned ledger. With estimation that with the decrease in settlement times, if the rise of loans may be at least half that of their High-Yield Bond market growth (i.e. between 5 percent and 6%), it would amount to an additional $149 billion of loan demand on the industry. Such loans generally carry 1% to  5% of fees, translating into extra income of $1.5 billion to $7.4 billion to investment banks. In addition, operational expenses, regulatory capital requirements and costs related to delayed compensation payments throughout the settlement of leveraged loans will probably be decreased together with the shortening of the settlement cycle.

Read more about basic idea behind Ethereum and Smart Contracts here.

Mortgage business to benefit from adoption of smart contracts

The mortgage loan process is dependent upon a intricate ecosystem for the origination, financing, and servicing of the mortgages, including costs and delays. Smart contracts could reduce the price and time involved in this process through automation, process redesign, shared access to electronic versions of bodily legal documents between trusted parties, and access to external sources of information such as land records.

Our earlier study on banks back-office automation suggests that mortgage lenders may expect savings between 6 percent and 15% from business $149 billion added leveraged loan volume increase with a reduction in settlement times 11 client fills mortgage application with earnings, taxation and property details Are property documents valid and lien status in order? Reject loan application and inform the client credit mortgage accounts article verification of earlier measures calculation of the cost savings possible from the usage of smart contracts in the US mortgage sector register bank’s lien on land signatures confirmed and mortgage accounts generated customer signs the mortgage document in addition to the witness mortgage record created approved rejected credit history id check KYC & AML check check income and land LTV reject program and notify the customer mortgage adviser creates loan workflow and updates credit, id, KYC, AML information in bank’s loan workflow for mortgage origination predicated on sale of 6.1 million houses of which 64% are being marketed on mortgage mortgage loan origination cost for an average loan of $200,000 in the US (2015), minimum savings US$ 4,349.5 17 billion 396.3 (9.1%) 1.5 billion 1,528.4 (35.1%) 6 billion. These numbers, coupled with our experience and discussions with industry experts, helped us estimate anticipated savings for each of the processes involved in loan origination. For example, in the US housing market, almost 6.1 million homes were sold in 2015. Based on historical averages, 64 percent of them were bought by home owners with a mortgage. We estimate that minimal savings of $1.5 billion could be achieved by loan providers through the automation of tasks in their organizations. Further, economies of $6 billion could be achieved once external partners such as credit scoring companies, land registry offices, and tax authorities become accessible over a blockchain to facilitate faster processing and reducing costs.

We also estimate that loan clients could expect a 11% To 22% drop in the entire price of mortgage processing fees billed to them if smart contracts are adopted. The total of outstanding mortgage loans across the united states and European Union countries in 2014 was valued at $20.98 trillion. Based on the US mortgage market case, smart contracts may possibly save between $3 billion and $11 billion in the new mortgage origination process across the US and EU.

Claims processing cost savings at the motor insurance industry

We consider that, in the motor vehicle insurance industry, smart Contracts that bring insurers, clients and third parties to a single platform Also, third-parties like chargers, transport providers and hospitals — once They are part of the dispersed ledger — will be able to supply faster Support against promises to clients and can anticipate quicker settlement of claims. The united kingdom motor insurance industry dropped 3.7 million claims and spent $13.3 Billion in claim expenses and costs. We calculate that roughly $1.67 Billion, or 12.5 percent of their overall costs, might be saved by adopting smart contracts. Dependent on the United Kingdom motor insurance market, we estimate that each year $21 billion could be spared from the global motor insurance industry via the Usage of smart contracts. A portion of savings can be passed on to the Clients via reduced premiums on motor insurance policies. We estimate that the Cost savings amounts to a reduction of $90 on average on each premium payment In the event the insurers pass on each of the savings generated from smart contracts Adoption to customers, and $45 per premium in the event the insurers decide to pass On only 50 percent of economies.

Ethereum Becoming the New Platform for Startups

Why is Ethereum bringing so many new startup businesses? Is Ethereum Becoming the New Platform for Startups?
The recent rise in value of Ethereum has flipped it to more than a billion dollar capitalization and next just to Bitcoin. Its worth is more than four occasions the worth of the third place crypto-currency, XRP. .

Ethereum was produced by Vitalik Buterin, a college dropout who although enthusiased from the potential for Bitcoin, felt that there may be a much better stage. Buterin, that has been compared to Steve Jobs, feels that his invention gives a strong platform for others to develop on and produce strong applications.

Buterin recently released his first production-ready version of Ethereum but even before this release, there had been a rush of startups to utilize the open platform and create blockchain based companies for new services and products, or to encouraging their existing companies.

“We’ve seen Microsoft and IBM doing projects on Ethereum. There’s a lot of coders. It’s fascinating to see something you were in on in the early phases growing and bearing fruit,” Anthony Di Iorio, one of Ethereum’s founders and a Chief Digital Officer at the Toronto Stock Exchange, said in an interview.

In 2015, there was a rush of venture capital into Bitcoin and Blockchain companies. This season, the potential and impact for Ethereum is seeing venture cash coming in especially targeted to Ethereum based startups.

Two leading venture capital companies, Boost VC, along with Blockchain Capital, are both taking a closer look at Ethereum companies.

Boost VC is obviously signaling their interest in Ethereum companies by stressing the cohesiveness of the developers and the powerful leadership exhibited by Buterin. Brock Pierce, founder of Blockchain Capital indicates that his firm is currently looking past Bitcoin for startups this year, stating, “you are likely to see that the usage of different blockchains beyond Bitcoin, such as these permissioned ledgers that a whole lot of financial institutions are interested in, but also even other people blockchains like Ethereum.”

One startup that has many people excited is Augur, that is constructing a prediction modeling system that is made on Ethereum.

Venture money is also moving towards Ethereum mining pools such as BTCS. Charles Allen, CEO of bitcoin mining outfit BTCS, noted that his firm recently constructed custom Ethereum mining rigs as part of a pilot program due to the escalating cost of ether.

Among the top crowdfunding sites for Blockchain related ventures is BnktotheFuture, which has helped to fund companies such as Factom and Bitpay, recently raised money for an Ether mining finance.

The billion dollar capitalization of Ethereum has clearly increased its profile and possibility of its currency, Ether as a powerful form of currency and investment.

We are guaranteed to see different startups and companies that will recognize this fact and provide investing abilities to exploit the possibility of Ether as a currency.

The growth and interest in Ethereum is making it clear that the conversation about cryptocurrencies can no more be limited to Bitcoin. As more startups and cash continue to chase the potential of Ethereum it is imperative that anybody following the electronic currency space needs to keep up to date to what is going on with Ethereum.

Ethereum is a open-source, public, blockchain-established distributed computing platform comprising intelligent contract (scripting) functionality. Ethereum additionally supplies a cryptocurrency token known as “ether”, which is transferred between accounts and utilized to compensate participant nodes for computations performed. “Gas”, an internal trade pricing mechanism, is utilized to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.

Ethereum becoming a top target for hackers

Ethereum has become a top target for hackers.

The promising cryptocurrency that’s also a stage for decentralized software has dropped in value during the last six months (although it also had a serious drop in price in the past couple of months). But hacker attacks and theft of ether are very commonplace, and the last one is one of the worst so far.

An unknown hacker or a bunch of hackers exploited a vulnerability in the manner by that Parity, an Ethereum wallet, executed multi-sig wallets, stealing some 153,000 value of ether, which was valued around $32 million in the time of theft.

According to a security alert on the Parity blog dated July 19, the vulnerability was fixed, but “any user with resources in a multi-sig pocket made in Parity Wallet prior to 19/07/17 23:14:56 CEST,” was exposed to ether theft.

The thieving has indeed happened and it could be seen on Ethereum’s blockchain here. And additional funds were stolen from other companies such as Edgeless Casino and Aeternity.

A multi-sig wallet is a wallet which needs more than one touch for a task to be performed on its own contents. Users who had regular wallets on Parity were not in danger (incidentally, the author of this text has until recently held some ether at a Parity wallet, but maybe not a multi-sig one).

What makes this theft particularly troublesome is that Parity is among the most trusted pockets at the company. The business was founded by Gavin Wood, who’s also a co-founder of Ethereum and has composed the first implementation of Ethereum back in 2014. What’s more, it seems that no quantity of caution on the consumers’ side could have prevented the theft.

Those transactions can be viewed here. The group has promised to return the capital to their owners once the vulnerability is fixed.

His isn’t even the first ether theft this week. On Tuesday, a first coin offering (ICO) of an Ethereum-based startup called CoinDash went south as hackers managed to change the wallet speech on the project’s webpage, siphoning away more than $10 million value of ether.

To repair the harm, Ethereum’s management decided to create a tough fork in the software, undoing the theft but also splitting Ethereum to two separate cryptocoins: Ethereum and (today far less precious) Ethereum Classic.

 

Ethereum is a system and programming language which makes it possible for any developer to construct and release next-generation decentralized software.  In summary: Ethereum is your internet, with no web servers. Ethereum may be used to codify, decentralize, protected and exchange just about anything: voting, domains, financial markets, crowdfunding, business governance, contracts and arrangements of most form, intellectual property, as well as wise property as a result of hardware integration.