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It Is a Delight to See the CTFC Exploring Ethereum and Reaching out to the Industry for Information to Assist in That Process. A

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It Is a Delight to See the CTFC Exploring Ethereum and Reaching out to the Industry for Information to Assist in That Process. A It is a delight to see the CTFC exploring Ethereum and reaching out to the industry for information to assist in that process. As an outspoken advocate for cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology for many years, I felt compelled to contribute what I could to your process. I first wrote about the benefits of derivatives in the crypto markets in 2013.1 Since then, I have co-founded two companies, including TradeBlock – the world’s leading provider of institutional trading tools and data services for digital currencies, and Axoni – a capital markets technology company working in partnership with many of the world’s leading financial institutions, including our engagement with the DTCC to replatform the post-trade infrastructure for the global credit derivatives market onto our blockchain technology. Please feel free to reach out to me directly with any questions. Greg Schvey 1 Hedging Bitcoin Mining Investments with Network Difficulty Futures – Aug 2013 https://tradeblock.com/blog/hedging-bitcoin-mining-investments-with-network-difficulty-futures-part-1- hedging-shipment-delay/ 1 & 2. What was the impetus for developing Ether and the Ethereum Network, especially relative to Bitcoin? What are the current functionalities and capabilities of Ether and the Ethereum Network as compared to the functionalities and capabilities of Bitcoin? Bitcoin established reliable peer-to-peer record keeping with the stated purpose of facilitating electronic payments. It achieves that objective by focusing on its core functionality: updating the balances of accounts on the network via validated debits and credits. While there is a handful of additional functions that can be facilitated natively on the bitcoin network, they are oriented around the facilitation of payments (i.e. require sign-off from multiple parties to send money, escrow, etc.). Ethereum leveraged many of the technical concepts of bitcoin related to security and verifiability, but used those as a foundation not only for payments, but also for the synchronized processing of any data. Whereas messages stored on the bitcoin ledger are oriented around adjusting account balances, messages on the Ethereum network can also contain executable computer code (i.e. applications). The underlying software in Ethereum coordinates with other nodes not only on the contents of the message that was sent, but also the latest state of all applications on the ledger. Bitcoin (and the many similar network before Ethereum) were “all too concerned about specific applications and not being sufficiently general - hence the birth of Ethereum,”2 which instead seeks to provide a distributed, reliable computer with open access to anyone in the world. 3 & 4. How is the developer community currently utilizing the Ethereum Network? More specifically, what are prominent use cases or examples that demonstrate the functionalities and capabilities of the Ethereum Network? Are there any existing or developing commercial enterprises that are using Ether to power economic transactions? If so, how is Ether recorded for accounting purposes in a comprehensive set of financial statements? The best-known applications of Ethereum tend to be oriented around asset transfer for speculative purposes. However, a long list of innovative applications has arisen over the past few years. DNS Alternative - The Domain Name System (DNS) serves as the global directory of the internet today. DNS is effectively a lookup of human-readable domain names (e.g. “google.com”), which are then used by DNS to route to the actual internet address of the target servers. While DNS is generally reliable, the lookup system is based on the trust of a small handful of centralized parties, which enables a handful of attack vectors if end users cannot trust the servers they’re using for that lookup process. Even Google has been the victim of such 2 Quote from the personal blog of Ethereum found Vitalik Buterin: https://about.me/vitalik_buterin attacks.3 Projects like EthDNS4 seek to leverage the distributed Ethereum network to store and process domain name lookups, enabling end-user verification of accuracy. Moreover, the benefits of a permanently-up network with thousands of distributed servers globally provides redundancy and resiliency that can improve the technical infrastructure on which our economy relies.5 Authentication of Digital Art - Bitcoin gave the world a reliable way to prove digital uniqueness, however, the application of that utility is limited to tracking the network’s native currency.6 Projects like R.A.R.E. leverage the Ethereum blockchain7 to track authenticity of digital creations. Insurance Automation - AXA, the world’s second largest insurance company, built an automated, transparent insurance product8 leveraging the Ethereum network. Insurance agreements related to travel delays are recorded as applications on the Ethereum blockchain. Third party data related to flight delays is also printed to the network, which in turn updates the state of the insurance contracts and triggers payments as relevant9. All parties involved benefit from the transparency of seeing that the contracts were executed appropriately and automatically. Gaming - One would be remiss to discuss Ethereum applications without mentioning gaming, particularly CryptoKitties.10 The game uses applications on the Ethereum network to represent “kittens” with different attributes, as well as provable uniqueness and ownership. Kittens can then be bred with other kittens, creating offspring that have a randomized blend of the attributes of the parent kittens. Given the native functionality of the Ethereum network, these kittens are tradeable, and anyone in the world can build a user interface on top of them. The concept may sound absurd or pointless (and as a first generation endeavor, it very well may be), but it would be naïve to dismiss the potential that this application has proven. The global games market is approaching $150 billion in annual revenue and, for the first time, there 3 More info: https://www.pcworld.com/article/2889392/like-google-in-vietnam-lenovo-tripped-up-by-a-dns- attack.html 4 More info: https://medium.com/@jgm.orinoco/ethdns-an-ethereum-backend-for-the-domain-name- system-d52dabd904b3 5 On Feb 1, 2019, Microsoft lost customer data due to an outage at their DNS provider: https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/02/01/dns-outage-turns-tables-on-azure-database-users/ 6 Note: additional data can be added to bitcoin transactions. However, it is a cumbersome and limiting process relative to Ethereum, which is designed for generalized information and processes 7 Note: files are stored on IPFS (InterPlanetary File System), a blockchain designed for file storage and transfer. Digital prints of those pieces are tracked as provably unique assets on the Ethereum blockchain. 8 More info: https://group.axa.com/en/newsroom/news/axa-goes-blockchain-with-fizzy 9 Payments are handled via traditional payment methods, rather than automated on the Ethereum network with ether, though AXA has announced their intent to eventually facilitate payments in the network’s native token. More info: https://medium.com/@laurentbenichou/fizzy-axa-reaches-a-new- milestone-fadd41f20e11 10 More info: https://www.cryptokitties.co/ is a way to create and track unique digital game pieces that can be accessed by anyone seeking to build a unique experience on top of the underlying data. Funding Open Source Contributions - Monetary rewards for contributions to software projects, commonly referred to as “bounties,” are common in the software developer ecosystem. Projects like Gitcoin11 leverage applications on the Ethereum blockchain to automate payments to developers for their contributions, reducing risk of non-payment. Transparent Funding of Research Grants - The National Research Council of Canada has begun publishing grant and contribution data to the Ethereum blockchain, with nearly $800M of grant data now publicly accessible to the world in an immutable record since the project’s inception. In the council’s own words, “This technology offers unprecedented levels of transparency and trust allowing public records to be searched, verified and audited at a level the world hasn’t seen before.”12 Digital Real Estate & Assets - With the provable uniqueness of digital objects on the network, combined with transparent ownership and easy transfer, some projects are building entire virtual worlds on top of Ethereum. For example, Decentraland13 is leveraging the Ethereum blockchain to manage ownership rights of virtual real estate, which can then be used to build entire virtual experiences, including economic activity, in virtual reality. Whether or not Decentraland itself takes hold, it is proving that real estate for entire regions can be tracked on a globally accessible network. Optimizing Energy Markets - Multiple projects14 looking to directly connect buyers and sellers of electricity have leveraged Ethereum’s blockchain to provide a distributed, openly-accessible marketplace for energy. By cutting out middle parties in the energy distribution process, these projects are looking to bring greater efficiency and lower costs to end users. 11 More info: https://gitcoin.co/ 12 More info: https://nrc-cnrc.explorecatena.com/en 13 More info: https://decentraland.org/ 14 Examples: https://gridplus.io/ , https://www.lition.io/p2p-platform, https://lo3energy.com/ 5. What data sources, analyses, calculations, variables, or other factors could be used to determine Ether’s market size, liquidity, trade
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