Digital Asset, ISDA Partner On Blockchain Tool For Derivatives Smart Contracts

Blockchain, News | April 10, 2019 By:

FinTech firm Digital Asset (DA) is working with the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) to develop an open-source reference code library that will help accelerate the adoption of ISDA’s digitization project.

Digital Asset builds products based on distributed ledger technology (DLT) for regulated financial institutions. Its platform allows participants to share a single source of truth which provides continuous data integrity. The platform includes Digital Asset Modeling Language (DAML), a domain specific language that enforces consistent interpretation and application of business logic, and provides a real-time, auditable log of ordered evidences of events.

Headquartered in New York City, ISDA is a trade organization of participants in the market for over-the-counter derivatives. The association is promoting the adoption of the Common Domain Model (CDM), a common digital representation of derivatives trade events and actions, which aims to improve the way derivatives are managed, from trade to processing while also establishing a standard foundation for the application of newer technologies, such as blockchain.

The parties are developing a reference code library that will support the implementation of the ISDA CDM by simplifying and standardizing the process of generating lifecycle events defined in the ISDA CDM.

“Digital Asset’s reference code library complements the ISDA CDM by allowing developers to unambiguously construct lifecycle events with a machine-executable specification,” DA said. “Furthermore, this reference code library specification allows the ISDA CDM to fully integrate with DAML. To help drive adoption of the ISDA CDM, Digital Asset has also made the reference code library public under an open-source license. ”

Kelly Mathieson, Head of Enterprise Solutions at Digital Asset, said that following their success at the Barclays DerivHack in London last year, they have been working closely with ISDA with the joint goal of standardizing processes across the derivatives industry.

“We are very excited to now make this reference implementation available to users via our DAML Software Developer Kit and the Rosetta Portal, enabling financial institutions to be in control of their own data,” said Mathieson.

Ian Sloyan, Director of Market Infrastructure and Technology at ISDA, said that the ISDA CDM establishes a common set of representations for events and processes that can be used by everyone, improving efficiency and facilitating greater automation.

“We’re pleased to work with Digital Asset to help implementation of this important standard,” said Sloyan.