The document discusses the evolution and implications of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain in the financial services sector, emphasizing its potential to reduce costs and enhance efficiency. Key themes include the differences between public and private ledgers, the role of smart contracts, and the challenges financial institutions face in adopting these technologies. It also highlights concerns over security, regulatory compliance, and the need for standardized protocols within the evolving DLT ecosystem.

1. DLT developments in finance
“Bitcoin created to reduce consumers’ costs by
replacing incumbent finance
not to cut infrastructure costs for traditional finance”
A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
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2. 2. Essence of blockchain
3. Financial institutions and blockchains
4. Private versus Public ledgers
5. Smart contracts
6. Issues and dilemmas
1. Introduction
2

3. BLOCKCHAIN defined:
1. Peer internet network of users (nodes) using a shared database and
computational logic to record & track either transactions or account balances
for a set of assets and users.
2. Users can modify accounts in the DLT and consider it as authoritive even
without a central management system
3. Records created are irreversible
Only digital
(no physical)
assets
Requires connections to
a. Off-chain processes for non-digital assets
b. Processing platforms of financial legacy
infrastructures
A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
3

4. Basic elements
Shared Contract
CryptographyShared Ledger
Consensus
Secure, authenticated &
verifiable transactions
Business terms
embedded in database
& executed with
transactions
All or designated
parties agree to
network verified
transaction
Language and system
of transactions and
counterparty data
shared across business
network
If sufficient participation cheaper, less complexity, increased speed of verification and execution &
increased efficiency
Source: IBM
Each blockchain
record is
cryptographically
enforced & hosted
on machines
working as a
datastore
A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
4

5. Auditable immutable log of database updates
# or hash (unique identifier) > digital fingerprint to associate with a (financial) transaction
and registered on blockchain.
# plus immutability > allows time stamping
# trust promoted through public & private key cryptography and use of cryptography for
transactions
Essential elements:
• Effective consensus rules to prevent double spending
• Time stamping,
• Anchoring (link to previous block)
• Notarization (digital signatures)
• Transaction level constraint (no credit)
Decentralised ledger with trust as a built-in feature
A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
5

6. Distributed
Ledger network
Source: IBM
External
aggregator
of feed
Oracles
Independent
permissioned
blockchain
Distributed virtual machine
(Turing-complete)
Smart contracts govern
off-chain assets
Network achieves
settlement finality
Markets
Distributed Ledger - Components A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
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7. Source
World Economic Forum (WEF)
7

8. Reasons for banks and FMIs taking on the blockchain challenge
Reduction of back-office costs
Reduction of costs of AML/KYC & ATF
Reduction of costs of hedging of risks and capital
Network effect provides economies of scale
Increase cyber resilience
Flatten value chain
Realising improvement of positions in markets and or value chain
A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV8

9. Silos of the Financial Services Industry
Source IBM 2015
9

10. Present
internal and
external
activities of
banks and
financial
market
institutions
Creating connections to internal operations & collateral management & identity management
Developing multi-party blockchains for specific business to business transactions
Coping with regular requirements regarding identification and certification (ALM / KYC/ ATF )
Developing internal private blockchains in local banks & in multinational banks
Interoperatibility of different DLTs and internationalization require standardization on global
scale e.g. IOSCO, CPMI, ISDA, ESMA
Internal operations: starting with selection of inefficient workflows & possibilities for automation
1. streamling highly intermediated processes,
2. looking for comparative advantages
Reducing errors, stimulating cost-efficiency
& profitability
10

11. Banks, financial market institutions and (IT) consultants participate in or drive shared ledgers relying
on consortia-style arrangements, but also within banks there are groups developing new approaches:
Taking into account the requirements of DVP transactions as well as involvement of many FMIs
creation of DLTs for Securities settlement or OTC clearing is difficult.
All pilot approaches are in different stages of development. In Asian, Russian countries innovative schemes
are also being created.
• Equity & debt issuance, including
payments of interest and dividends
• Wholesale payments
• Syndicated loans
• Derivatives post trade development
• CDSmanagement
• Clearing and settlement of stocks
• Reference data
• Mortgages
• Specialized trading
• Cross border financial activities
• Digital identities
• Recording of financial data
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12. Blockchains
Database access Open read / write Permissioned read (need to know
basis) and /or write using
encryption
Sensitive information in
seperate (own ) databases
Consensus Proof of work or proof of stake
(miners)
Specific simpeler algoritms / agreements between participants
Transparency High Low
Data Storage volume Large Much less
Speed Slower Faster to enable high throughput
Security Only Proof-of-work /proof of stake
Open chain allows attacks on codes,
on wallets etc
Pre-approved participants
Identity Anonymous /pseudoanonymous Known identities
Assets Native (cryptocurrencies or tokens) Any digital asset
Parties involved Everybody interested:
unknown entities can
propose/validate transactions
Only Trusted and Accountable
institutions in a closed network
Selected Partners ,
regulators
Information Open to any one
(all entities share info)
Open general info,
but sensitive info (commercial &
business) is private
Confidential info of ledger
public Private or restricted
Goverance Nobody responsible Owners of platforms and or organization of participants
responsible 12

13. Most banks and financial market institutions prefer restricted DLTs as:
Open DLTs a. offer little confidentiality
b. allow for illicit behaviour still have coding errors and are cyberattack prone
c. have no KYC, AML or ATF provisions
d. have inefficient validation methods
Restricted DLTS hardly requires changes in market structure,
e. while current relations mainly can stay Intact with little extra costs of connecting with
legacy structures
f. costs of verification data and transactions and operating network costs can be reduced
dramatically
g. little risk of capacity constraints (scalability, energy & hardware) and
no additional costs related to network operations of public networks
h. security can be higher
Banks, financial market institutions and governments in favour of:
High level of governance, authentification, confidentiality and accessibility
These elements are important for trust of most market participants
13

14. Major Ecosystems
1. Bitcoin
2. Ethereum (alternative to bitcoin)
3. Hyperledger
4. Corda
• In Dec.2016 FMIs only used a few restricted (or private)blockchains
• Limited transparency of data embedded in blockchain or off blockchain
• Risk of collusion due to many individual DLTs ( closed shop situation & relatively less
internal checks & balances).
• Risk of reduction in competition between banks and FMI as providers of financial services
Usable as Restricted (private)DLTs
Major options for others
1) Reconfigure a public
permissionless DLT network for
private use, or
2) Build on top of an available
untested restricted(private)
DLT network
Lots of start-ups and individual financial
institutions in different stages of
development or in niches
14

15. Bitcoin
Public blockchain platform in widespread production: only payment transactions (attractive for crossing
borders) in cryptocurrency
• Trust, tracebility, verifiability and prevention of concentration of power
• No identity on blockchain & no AML / KYC or other border restrictions & immunity to regulatory and
monetary policies
• Attractive for a) tax evaders, criminals, terrorists; alternative to gold, silver in countries with weak currencies
b)investors looking for yield (limited supply-demand relationship)
But: Bitcoin scams, hacking scandals, interoperability, governance problems and miners centralization
(51% attack), scalability, risk of gouvernement regulations
Orientation toward Enterprise friendly platforms & sidechains (build on bitcoin blockchain)
Recently efforts to increase scalability: Segregated witnes (a.o. modest limit increase) soft fork of bitcoin
15

16. Ethereum
• Blockchain with built-in cryptocurrency contains (Turing complete) “contracts”which are compact computer programs
• These contracts are replicated and maintained by every participating node.
• Proof of work to be replaced by Proof of stake (“validators” replace “miners”)
• Every single node in the network processes every transaction and maintains the entire state
• Transaction processing capacity can not exceed that of a single node.
• Every user can create a contract
• All transactions cost a small amount of cryptocurrency
• Scalability improving through “state channels” (of blockchain transactions conducted directly between parties
and “sharding” (only limited nodes randomly carry out processing, resulting in parallel operations)
• Incorporating privacy using combinations of cryptographic hashes and signatures or advanced cryptographic techniques
to obfuscate the meaning of a transaction)
• In development of non-proof –of-work consensus algorithms
• Private platforms in development (e.g Quorum for JP Morgan)
Many public and
private blockchains
& platform based
on forks of
Ethereum , eg
Monax
Ethereum virtual machine (EVM)
Handling internal state and computation of
accounts  maintain internal database,
execute code & talk to each other
Correct code execution and sharding could be
issues in financial blockchains
Standards for Traditional
enterprise security & identy
architectures to be met
16

17. Corda
1. Open source release distributed ledger platform including smart contracts, meant to set standard
2. Primarily developed for recording and managing financial agreements between regulated financial institutions
3. Only parties with a legitimate need to know to see data (privacy protection) so no copy for all participants
4. Consensus process is controlled by a pre-selected set of nodes and between institutions at level of individual deals
rather than all participants (variety of consensus mechanisms available)
5. Validation by parties to the transaction (stakeholders to the deal) on contract by contract basis.
6. Regulatory and supervisory observer nodes enabled
7. Explicit link between legal prose documents and smart contract code
8. No native cryptocurrency
3RCEV (technology provider, IT consultants)
Consortium of more than 60 financial institutions
Experiments with more than 5 ledgers
No blockchain,
only a business to
business protocol!
Interoperability possible
Open sourced in nov.
2016 to Hyperledger and
Microsoft
Problems: 1.Without patents many institutions can copy this approach and build on it.
2.Transparancy of data etc. for institutions not part to the deal is low
3.Financial institutions with Blockchain patents will try to build their own standard 17

18. The Hyperledger project is an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain
technologies. Linux Foundation (non-profit) hosts Hyperledger Platform as a Collaborative Project under the foundation.
IBM is a prominent member.
Presently available:
a. Corda platform (recently added), b. Sawtooth Lake c. Iroha
Sawtooth
Modular platform initiated by Intel; under development. It uses a single
consensus protocol, PoET, for “Proof of Elapsed Time.” This is a lottery
protocol that builds on trusted execution environments to address needs of
large populations of participants.
A second consensus protocol, Quorum Voting, serves to address needs of
applications that require immediate transaction finality (finality after
production of certain number of blocks)
Disadvantage: to be run on Intel's proprietary hardware
Iroha
In incubation: with a simple architecture
and reusable C++ components (can call
from languages as Go) to increase speed.
Mobile usage. Focussed on KYC
18

19. Modular platform initiated by Intel; under
development. It uses a single consensus protocol,
PoET, for “Proof of Elapsed Time.” This is a lottery
protocol that builds on trusted execution
environments to address needs of large
populations of participants.
A second consensus protocol, Quorum Voting,
serves to address needs of applications that
require immediate transaction finality (finality
after production of certain number of blocks)
Disadvantage: to be run on Intel's proprietary
hardware.
Sawtooth Iroha
In incubation: with a simple architecture
and reusable C++ components (can call
from languages as Go) to increase speed.
Mobile usage. Focussed on KYC
A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
19

20. Digital Asset Platform
Specifically developed for financial services industry:
Post-trading settlement (DTCC & ASX),further syndicated loans and Treasury Repo.
Very recently: Distributed network with privacy protection (confidentiality) defining 2 components:
a. Global Synchronization Log (GLS): confidential transaction data including price, transaction party
details, other private user data & changes to state of smart contracts,
> remains on relevant bank servers
b. Public network with digital fingerprints (or Hash): bare minimum of non- confidential
blockchain & smart contract data (market-wide rules) coded in DAML (a smart contract language)
• Multi-operator network
• Operator initiates blockchain with a predetermined consensus algorithm
with a primary rotation for entities that will order transactions and closely monitor
behavior for erroneous or malicious activity
Reduced operational risks & costs and no scalability issues (errors eliminated, no reconciliation requirements)
Interaction possible with existing bank protocols
Individual
transactions
interpretable only
combining both
components
20

21. 1. Concensus mechanism (PBFT) with a signature based chaincode. A financial institution starts and other financial
institutions and multinationals act as consenters: verifying and confirming transacions. Other peers only endorse.
Ledger replicas are identical.
2. Privacy of data at financial institutions is preferred (storage costs)
3. Preference for unencrypted info on chain because of riskiness and costs of decrypting keys in case of tracking assets.
Chain only used for timestamping and transfer signals.
4. Modularity, chain hosts smart contracts (“chaincode”)
5. Interconnectivity with other blockchains
6. Participants are allowed to share multiple ledgers
Digital assets holding : since October 2016
Hyperledger Fabric (as a DLT)
A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
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22. Smart contracts
If-then statement
Digital coded agreement on blockchain
concerning self-execution processes
Immutability and simplicity enables automation, reduces costs & speeds up
financial transactions efficiency gains
Components:
a. Identification agreement
b. Definition of trigger for transaction (business logic)
c. Circumstances causing trigger / execution
d. Signatures (hash or identifier) & time stamp
e. Timing of completion of transaction
f. Updating network
A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
22

23. Smart contracts
Requirements: Encrypted private and public keys
Multisig or turing complete contracts
Standards (standardization of language, templates incl. underlying technologies)
Protocols for “legally” executing smart legal agreements
Business and legal prose translated into code
Complete information synchronization & data integrity for partners
Automated escrows
External Oracles (as a single source of proof) / external aggregators of feeds
Verification (trusted agent) confirming compliance with contractual agreements
Arbitration (dispute resolution) agreements 23

24. Smart contracts
Simplification standardised, automated commands, offering electronic self execution
Management often hesitant:
• No uniform standards and protocols yet
• Lack of regulatory guidance and knowledge of cryptology /
programming, lack of experience
• Smart contracts only replace those parts of contractual agreements suited to automatic processing
• Doubts about positive business case:
High capital costs
Insufficient cost-benefit analysis
Insufficient knowledge of risks involved
24

25. Smart contract risks
• Bugs, inaccuracies, errors in coding- & programming language
• Wrong interpretation of agreements between partners
• Wrong coding of activities, circumstances & to implement actions
• Wrong information (or handling thereof) derived from data
embedded in blockchain or from external data
• No force majeure clauses, no guaranteed computation
• Uncertainty about legal enforceability of contract
Challenge information synchronisation & data integrity & legal enforceability
Risks
Security flaws can be
very costly and bad for
reputation,
Management &
control require
knowledge of
computer languages,
cryptography and
law (and finance)
Shortage of combined
expertise
25

26. Smart contract risks
• Only short simple and highly standardardized statements & formats (approval of
regulators?!)
• Minimal use of code, conservative scripting of language
• Professional due diligence by parties involved in smart contract
• Escape hatch (?)
• Selected pre-agreed terms of smart contract agreement (off blockchain):
governing laws, indemnification, jurisdictions etc.
• Combination of smart contract with traditional contract (recording terms and conditions of
arrangement) acceptable according to laws and regulations in appropriate jurisdictions
CODE IS FREQUENTLY NOT LAW
• Third parties no access to confidential commercial information
NO TRANSPARENCY
Challenge information synchronisation & data integrity & legal enforceability
Solutions
26

27. 1. Difficult decisions are required regarding participation and promotion of specific blockchains and
their interoperability & the choice of standards. As many blockchains are occurring on a global
scale international efforts are needed.
2. Financial institutions have different interests owing to business models, risk profiles, strategies
and resources and also differ as the influence of DLTs on their corporate capabilities & the
revenues
and costs of integrating the blockchain into their organizations.
3. Each institution has to compare DLT investments with other investment options.
DLT investments should be considered in the context of broader ongoing digitalization of the
banking industry and the consequences for competitive advantages.
4. Cyber-security protection across distributed nodes should be high.
Challenges and dilemmas
A.P.Ranner, Jan 1, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
Trust is vital
27

28. 5. DLT Consensus- / validation systems with only a limited number of nodes or with a
platform owner in demand can lead tot errors, conflicts of interest and collusion.
6. The network effect is important for DLT take-off, but shape and attractiveness of this network is
influenced by broad user acceptance
7. DLTs Governance frameworks should be of same high standard as other banking frameworks
8. Incorporating different DLTs in the accounting / valuation framework of most financial institutions
and individual customers has to start yet but requires formidable efforts.
9. Regulators and monetary authorities require complete information (AML/KYC/AFT)
but also market- and other statistics. Providing the authorities with DLT-nodes is
probably not sufficient. Authorities are most likely to share extra costs however only in exchange for more
services.
10. How to create sufficient skills to create, understand & work with DLTs?
Solutions easing the interpretability of computer language, cryptography and
blockchain / smart contract language are required to enable DLTs to take off.
Challenges and dilemmas
28

29. Cryptocurrencies and permissionless blockchains
Only with a significant volume increase:
1. Risk of reduced monetary control of supply and circulation of fiat money,
2. Undermining the effectiveness of monetary policies
3. Risk of systemic consequences if large unregulated blockchains go down
.
National monetary authorities are to issue digital central bank money, in
order to control money supply
A.P.Ranner, Jan 11, 2017
Financial consultancy
S O V E R E I G N BV
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National monetary authorities are to
promote international harmonization of rules and regulations for DLTs
Contribute to or control suitable use and practices regarding DLTs