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Blockchain/DLT, due to its characteristics, is a technology with great potential for the financial world. Indeed, it is possible to enable use cases and ecosystems that can improve the operation and efficiency of certain processes as well as create new business models.
There are three areas where DLT is believed to create value in the near future. The first area is Decentralized Finance (DeFi, Decentralized Finance) and the Token Economy. As evidenced by the Institutional DeFi for Security Token by. Cetif Advisory, the technology can be used to establish the first Italian ecosystem of decentralized governed finance. The project, in which placement banks, SGRs, insurance companies and corporate firms are participating, aims to design and test the process of issuing and managing Security Token for Retail customers and promote an Institutional Automated Market Maker (AMM) economic model on a public Blockchain platform. However, this case requires promoting the development of a clear and shared regulatory framework to generate new and efficient security token trading models in the financial sector.
The second area is related to ESG issues, which have now become fundamental to the financial sector . The most interesting international use cases relate to the tokenization of energy savings. The goal of the initiatives is to be able to finance energy efficiency projects by issuing tokens subscribed by contributors and representing expected future savings . But another application of DLT/Blokchain could be in infosharing. There are, in fact, numerous critical issues related to the lack of quality data, the presence of high information asymmetry, and a great deal of regulatory fragmentation due to regulations that are still in the making and require harmonization. In the face of the need to find standards for assessing ESG profiles, Blockchain/DLT may be a technology to be used as part of the interoperability of data collection, especially on the SME segment. ESG On-Chain, is the project of Cetif Advisory , developed on DLT technology, aimed at supporting the financial market and large companies in collecting, monitoring and updating data and information related to the sustainability of SMEs, based on the principle of transferability and interoperability of information between players in the financial ecosystem.
Third and last area of evolution is related to digital identities. Use cases of DLT technology applied to citizen identity and KYC are numerous, and even in Italy, within Sandbox MEF, a project Cetif of self sovereign identity is active. But the evolution of this model is expected for Corporate and SME enterprises to facilitate onboarding operations and Compliance processes AML. Internationally, there are already a number of initiatives that enable verification of the digital identity of enterprises. Among them, a Swiss project acts as a certifying body by issuing a DID (Digital Identity) that guarantees the veracity of the data and its constant updating. In addition, certification offers SMEs the opportunity to access financial services quickly and institutions the opportunity to have real-time information needed to validate control and verification processes. For this reason, Cetif Advisory sees an opportunity to launch an ecosystem initiative on DLT technology, with the aim of minimizing the time it takes to verify information and enable the sharing of low-value verification processes among institutions.
The future of DLT technology is, however, tied to the ability of financial institutions to systemize, or establish digital industry ecosystems, by revising business models and value chains. In the absence of this strategic business vision, Blockchain alone does not seem to be able to simultaneously maximize its three main attributes, namely scalability, transparency and decentralization (Blockchain Trilemma) . New players and new ecosystems are being generated, however, and the risk for the banking industry is to fail to enter these new network paradigms.
Edited by the team Cetif Research
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