Sharing ledgers for sharing economies: an exploration of mutual distributed ledgers (aka blockchain technology)

Michael Mainelli and Mike Smith
Additional contact information
Mike Smith: Z/Yen Group Limited

Journal of Financial Perspectives, 2015, vol. 3, issue 3, 38-58

Abstract: Mutual distributed ledgers (MDLs) have the potential to transform the way people and organizations handle identity, transaction and debt information. MDL technology provides an electronic public transaction record of integrity without central ownership. The ability to have a globally available, verifiable and untamperable source of data provides anyone wishing to provide trusted third-party services, i.e., most financial services firms, the ability to do so cheaply and robustly. Blockchain technology is a form of MDL. The InterChainZ project was a consortium research project to share learning on MDLs during the summer of 2015. The study found that InterChainZ showcased several distributed ledger configurations and numerous variants, exploring how they might work in a set of agreed “use cases.” The outputs were a series of functioning, interlinked MDLs along with software, explanatory materials and website information. The research consortium concluded that MDLs incorporating trusted third parties for some functions had significant potential in financial services, such as know-your-customer (KYC), anti- money laundering (AML), insurance, credit and wholesale financial services.

Keywords: Mutual distributed ledgers; financial services; blockchain technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G10 G20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:jofipe:0086

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Financial Perspectives is currently edited by Ms Alina Stefan

More articles in Journal of Financial Perspectives from EY Global FS Institute 1 More London Place, London SE1 2AF, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ms Alina Stefan ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).