Blockchain Report — 4/27/2018
By: Shaun Newsum
Tags: Blockchain, News, Malta, Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin

Summary: Barclays Creates ISDA Standard For Blockchain Derivatives; IBM Created A Blockchain For Jewelry; Malta Approves Cryptocurrency And Blockchain Bills

Barclays And Goldman Sachs Create ISDA Standard For Blockchain Derivatives

Barclays Logo

According to Coindesk, there is still a fundamental issue with blockchains and smart contracts — the lack of solid standardization for companies. As of right now, different distributed ledger technologies (DLT)have a variety of different formats that they store data. This makes it difficult to gain an advantage from a DLT.

Blockchain evangelists are hoping that an industry-wide standardization occurs for DLTs, regardless of the DLT or which blockchain the data is stored in.

One such standardization was proposed by the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) last year in May, called the common domain model (CDM). The CDM has support from different blockchain startups including R3 and Axoni. Another prominent backer of the CDM is the U.K. bank Barclays.

A member from CTO office at Barclays said, “what we haven’t yet seen is adoption of common standards by the [blockchain] industry… what we ultimately need in the derivatives space is multiple market infrastructures, including multiple clearing houses, adopting a common standard for data formats, reference data, transactional data, and business processes.”

Barclays estimates significant cost savings to the derivatives market by adopting CDM. It’s projected to save $2.5 billion in annual costs and provide 25% efficiency gains.

IBM Created A Blockchain To Verify The Jewelry Supply Chain

IBM Logo

According to Tech Crunch, IBM has been working on a variety of different enterprise projects using blockchain technology. Recently they offered a project called TrustChain, a blockchain that can verify the place of origin of jewelry by following the supply chain of the item from the mine to the store.

Trustchain is built on top of IBM blockchain technology and involves a number of different companies for each step of the supply chain. For example, Asahi Refining is involved as a precious metals refiner, as well as Helzberg Diamonds which is a U.S. jewelry retailer.

The general manager of blockchain services at IBM said,

“[TrustChain is] the first end-to-end industry capability on blockchain that has its core in trust… if there is a dispute, instead of calling and following back through the process in a more manual way, you can click on a trusted chain, and you’re able to see what happened immediately. That reduces the number of steps in the process.”

TrustChain would be a permissioned blockchain, meaning that only certain people are allowed to participate in the blockchain and everybody on the blockchain has to agree to bring on a new member.

Malta Approves Three Bills To Provide Legal Certainty For Blockchain And Cryptocurrency Businesses

According to Independent, Malta’s cabinet approved three legal bills which were presented to parliament for its first reading. The three bills were the Malta Digital Innovation Authority Bill, the Technology Arrangments and Services Bill, and the Virtual Financial Assets Bill.

The purpose of these bills is to provide legal certainty for businesses and individuals that are looking to get involved in distributed ledger technologies such as cryptocurrencies and the blockchain.

Malta’s Parliamentary Secretary for the Digital Economy Silvio Schrembri said the following about blockchain and cryptocurrencies:

“Nowadays we are operating within an environment that is not regulated. I can understand the reluctance of banks not to open up accounts in this type of industry. I strongly believe that once these laws will be enacted, this will answer a lot of questions especially when it comes to Anti Money-Laundering and KYC issues.”

Schrembri also mentioned an overwhelming positive response to the bills by cryptocurrency exchanges, asset managers, and market makers who would be included under the bills. Malta also received constructive and positive feedback from individuals affected under the bill.