2019-08-28 Meeting Notes

Date

28 Aug 2019

Attendees

• Vipin Bharathan

• Natalia Garciagonzalez

• kellycooper.2ds
• Saptarshi Choudhury
• stanislav.liberman

Goals

• Projects: these relate to all the topics mentioned below.
• Provide a safe space to discuss Capital Markets related regulations, standards, use cases, challenges in dlts and in Hyperledger in particular.

Discussion items

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Track Action items from last call

• Submit 10:00 biweekly meeting time to Hyperledger calendar. Karen Ottoni
• Contribute toward projects between SIG meetings to include project page updates and project-level action items.

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Minutes

Stan Liberman - DLT applications - exchange space and Hyperledger - use cases and opportunities

Vipin Bharathan - Capital Markets space 15 years, front-to-back applications. Opportunity, limitations, problems with the application of blockchain tech to the space and technical aspects of what it takes to put things in production in a heavily regulated enterprise. Other interests are in digital identity space - chair of Identity WG. 

Natalia Garcia - SIG vice-chair - work on Capital Markets origination - specifically bonds, commercial paper, finance. Interest - work on business origination side, technology implementation changes and processes.

Saptarshi Choudhury- first meeting - please add contact information about your interests and work to the SIG page.

Vice-chair role

According to the charter, runs the calls if the chair is not available. Natalia will explore and work on minutes, in Confluence, etc. going forward. 

Scribe

Kelly is scribing.

Share Tech Blog

London - announce/launch SIG. Share technical blog - starting with the charter. Vipin started a blog - looking for more information on Projects - engaging content in order for us to represent the SIG. The main idea - promote so more join from Sibos conference on September 23-26. May be multiple presentations - perhaps a document and a graphical on-screen presentation.

Obstacles Paper

Categories - bullets. Please +1 or -1 for priority and value to the topic of Obstacles in the capital markets sector.

Target audience is business stakeholders who want to better understand the direct value add of blockchain.  Additional angle, how x is relevant to capital markets.

Use cases. A lot of vulnerabilities applicable for the public chain; private deployment or Ethereum, are we leveraging the EVM.
Which vulnerabilities are consensus protocol, communication layer, will boil down to specifics of where applicable. Helpful to have a thorough survey of vulnerabilities. See where they apply to proposed implementations. Where can technologies be used in capital market systems?

Paper, as a whole - vast. A lot of headings. Too many? Target audience? Ideas need to link together, use cases. Change is foreign, business stakeholders bring up obstacles to adopting new technologies. Educating ways to overcome the obstacles; share what people are doing to overcome obstacles and adopt new technologies. Behavioral methods to overcome obstacles. Choices presented (in a manner of some ideas of behavioral economics). May not win over on technical merits, logic alone. A well-articulated, well thought through set of points will be helpful in assuaging some of the fears.
One of the first questions asked by business stakeholders PoC - has it been implemented in production, has it been launched, what has actually been done?
If we build up a library of implementations - point to specific use cases would be of benefit. Each header item in the paper will be linked, if possible to a solution of the perceived obstacle. Keep lightweight with links to the publicly available information. Difficult to find other than press releases. Consider new markets built. One example is ASX Project, another is in Northern Trust - relates to custody. And, corporate actions.
Vipin will reach out to find out if there is more publicly available data to slot into the obstacle sections to say how the use case addresses obstacles.

RMG Royal Mint Gold - tokenization of gold held in the Royal Mint, a project that failed due to the lack of customers. Aim for a comprehensive picture that includes obstacles and links to Stan's use case project.

Projects

Mani worked on Standards - added a section on ISDA CDM. Business process standards - legal agreements, each contract ie derivative contract, through the use of smart contracts - common domain models (CDM). 

Saptarshi asks - How do we quantify matrices for ROI for specific use cases. What are the right parameters to determine ROI with customers? Vipin notes review of company, finances, team, trying to project ROI of a particular solution. As part of a business case you present for any new project; ROI (clock) is very important. BAAS? Serverless? Look at Amazon, Google, Microsoft are doing will help? 

Saptarshi on: ROI

From a business perspective -

• what are the revenue drivers for the vertical and specific customer in the vertical?
• What are additional considerations, different segments, different layers?
• Try to see do they have anything technical implemented in their ecosystem.
• Are we the first guys to start from scratch.
• IE no IT in Arts arena, some customers who have IT.
• What is the impact of business and revenue? Data integration.
• Specifics of blockchain from a high level, then narrow in to the customer.
• Identify or segregate verticals, customers, revenue streams, connectors in revenue streams.
• Primary, secondary levels of revenue streams.
• What will benefit them and what re the challenges. Not blockchain aspect - business space - 1.5 months to complete.
• Data integration - if legacy infrastructure - architect addresses specific quesitons.
• Data in silos is a challenge. BAAS - looking at a financial services customer in NYC - hold data, do not push to cloud.
• How do you implement blockchain when the customer is not willing to push data to the cloud? Design of data architecture - challenge. Saptarshi works in the public sector primarily.
• Questions to ask? to support quantifying ROI. 
• The first question asked of a technology vendor - what is the ROI? When it's implemented in reality, too low from what was claimed. Narrow to correct data.