The set-up of a new comprehensive, interoperable and reliable DLT ecosystem based on Swiss quality standards requires cooperation across companies, organizations and experts as well as interactions with policy makers and regulators. This will help citizens leverage the potential of DLT technology, by enabling the independent storage of digital information, values and rights, as well as their straightforward, legally secure and efficient transfer. To achieve this, MME and Swisscom have brought together industry leaders and experts from academia and business to create coherence between the technical and legal domains and to jointly foster ongoing DLT initiatives.
4 Elements of Trust
The team has previously produced four explanatory videos for each element of trust. Following the same structure, the whitepaper outlines each of these core pillars of a trusted DLT infrastructure to support and promote the adoption of DLT technology:
- Configuration: This chapter describes how to ensure the authenticity, integrity, confidentiality and availability of information on digital assets. The focus is on synchronisation of on- and off-chain information, i.e. legally relevant data with technical information. The full potential of the new technology can only be achieved by securely and efficiently linking off-chain documents, such as the Registration Agreement, with the respective DLT information.
- If you are interested in having additional information about the Trust element of Configuration, please watch the following video.
- Consensus: This element defines the requirements for (inter)operability between protocols. Ten principles have been defined, which all DLT interfaces should adhere to in order to achieve effective, secure and flawless communication.
- If you are interested in having additional information about the Trust element of Consensus, please watch the following video.
- Custody: This part addresses how digital assets can be reliably and easily stored within the framework of self-custody and third-party custody solutions. It provides an overview of the regulation of custody solutions under current Swiss law and shows how the integrity of the financial market and investor protection can be granted.
- If you are interested in having additional information about the Trust element of Custody, please watch the following video.
- Transaction: The last chapter explains how the legally secure transfer of digital assets “peer-to-peer” between users of a digital infrastructure can be ensured easily and without intermediaries. In particular, it focuses on the new legal concept around the register value law, which has found its way into the Code of Obligations as part of the amendments to the DLT . It will examine which contractual foundations must be created as a minimum content in order to enable a legally valid transfer of dematerialised, digitalised rights.
- If you are interested in having additional information about the Trust element of Transaction, please watch the following video.
With the publication of this whitepaper, the authors would like to contribute to Switzerland’s continuous establishment and development as one of the world’s leading, innovative and sustainable locations for fintech companies and DLT initiatives.
The publication of the whitepaper also heralds the next phase of the 4T DLT initiative. Currently, the initiators are working on sharpening the next goals and are looking forward to expanding the collaborative circle. A regular forum will be held to openly discuss innovation , lessons learned, and improvement approaches across industries and academia.
Interested in obtaining full access to the Whitepaper, please download it here.
Interested in becoming part of the community, i.e. to stay up to date, to contribute to the discussion or to participate in the creation of a secure, interoperable and reliable Swiss Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) infrastructure – join the community here.