## 7 BFS Architecture Components
### Actors, Roles, Elements, and Fundamental Processes
It utilises accounting transaction smart contract functionality to fetch the latest entry from the relevant accounts in the GL to provide pre-settlement verification of monetary claimsmade by the counterparties of the business transactions, ensuring that the offered funds are available. **Consensus:** The BFS system employs a \"funds verification\" consensus mechanism that introduces a novel approach to verifying transactional integrity within a blockchain-integrated accounting framework. This method ensures the economic validity of transactions by comparing the transaction value against the available funds in the latest accounting records of an economic entity, confirming that sufficient funds exist to cover the transaction. Unlike traditional consensus mechanisms that seek broad network agreement, the BFS system's consensus model focuses on bilateral verification between transacting parties, utilising accounting data to confirm the financial soundness of transactions without revealing sensitive details. This targeted approach leverages concepts from Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) to maintain privacy, confirming the truthfulness of fund availability claims to the involved parties without disclosing any further financial information. The design and implementation of the BFS system introduces a novel approach to the role of validators within the blockchain network, specifically tailored to enhance the transparency, efficiency, and integrity of financial reporting. Furthermore, unlike traditional blockchain models where validators add blocks to a blockchain, in the BFS system's design, the responsibility for adding blocks is reserved for an accountant and can involve the explicit approval of the company directors. This design decision was motivated to align the functionality of the BFS system with traditional accounting reporting practices. The validator's role is redefined to focus solely on the following:  
* Verifying the _integrity of transactional data_, including checks for the completeness, accuracy, and consistency of transactional data;
* Verifying the _validity of signatures_ to confirm that transactions have been initiated by legitimate parties and have not been tampered with during transmission;
* The tokenisation process, which involves converting sensitive data into non-sensitive data tokens that can be shared within the blockchain ecosystem. Tokenisation helps to maintain data privacy while allowing transactions to be processed and verified on the network. The BFS project uses tokenisation to facilitate the transfer of ownership of financial assets relevant to the use case. Examples of financial assets tokenised in this project include _shares_, _share certificates_, _commercial paper_, and _Treasury bills_. This specialised design and implementation of the roles and responsibilities of the validator ensures that it concentrates on the accuracy and authenticity of transactions without being involved in block creation, thereby streamlining the validation process and enhancing system security. By separating the roles of validator and accountant, the BFS system's design enhances the focus on transactional integrity and privacy. _Shares and Share Certificates._ These are examples of traditional financial assets utilised in the digital infrastructure of the BFS ecosystem. These assets are issued by BFS-enabled business entities through processes of tokenisation. A share certificate represents a tokenised document that demonstrates the purchase of shares from the share issuer by the shareholder. This tokenised certificate pertains to all relevant details relating to the shares that have been acquired on a certain date by a particular shareholder. During a business transaction, this certificate is generated and transferred to the shareholder's ownership. _Commercial Paper and Treasury Bills._ These are examples of debt assets issued and traded during business transactions between BFS entities.