This paper investigates the case study of William Powhida and two different contracts that the artist developed: first, the intentionally draconian contracts that the artist developed within an artwork, Grevsky, to force artists into subordinating their intellectual property position to commodification, and second, the contract that the artist William Powhida, the person, developed to ask his friends to help him store art. Applying Grantâs (2013 Grant, A. M. 2013. Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success. New York: Viking. [Google Scholar]) framework of givers, takers, and transactors, this paper presents a conceptual framework of ungenerous and generous contracts. The paper makes the argument that economic awareness, legal strategy, and a spirit of friendship can co-exist and that draconian contracts are rarely needed in an arts context in which stakeholders are likely to have shared interests in both sides of a contract. This analysis presents a more generalizable framework of non-zero-sum contractual negotiation in relation to the artistic and financial nature of works of art, as well as an argument for the importance of rhetoric and contractual structures of collaboration and friendship. These contractual questions become increasingly important as artists employ self-executing âsmartâ contracts for blockchain-based or non-fungible token (NFT) works, and as artists continue to rely on contracted freelance work. The increased reliance on digital working conditions creates higher stakes rights management given likelihood of recording.
Purpose This study aims to discuss the European Commissionâs proposal for a pilot regime for market infrastructures to experiment with the distributed ledger technology (DLT). In this respect, the study comments on the purpose, scope, requirements and attention points for market operators, investment firms and central securities depositories (CSDs) that are considering using this technology. Design/methodology/approach This paper focuses on the proposed rules surrounding the DLT pilot regime. The study is based on an analysis of the proposal, compares it with existing literature and presents the purpose and scope of the regime, followed by a detailed analysis of the proposed requirements. Findings The proposed requirements aim to provide legal certainty, ensure investor protection, support innovation and protect financial stability. The European Commission attempts to reach these goals by establishing uniform requirements for the DLT market infrastructures by means of a European sandbox approach. This study stresses that a level playing field between the various market participants using the technology should be warranted and provides arguments for why the proposal is incomplete in this respect. Originality/value To the best of the authorâs knowledge, there are no other articles that provide a holistic overview of the proposed regulation and describe the choices that legislators have made so far. This paper will be of interest to all market operators, investment firms and CSDs that have interest in DLT. The study is also of value to their stakeholders, such as their regulators, market participants and their clients, as well as to other linked financial market infrastructures.
Abstract This chapter uses mobile payments and distributed ledger business models and technologies as case studies to demonstrate how operational problems in the payments system can trigger and transmit financial distress. It also examines proposals for central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and proposals to use distributed ledger technology for post-trade processing, concluding that while there are strong use cases for these types of fintech innovations, they are not without financial stability risks. This chapter therefore stresses the need for a new type of âmacro-operationalâ regulation that responds to the potential systemic interactions of operational problems. Finally, this chapter considers the risks associated with increased reliance on a small group of third-party technology vendors (particularly cloud computing vendors).
Ămit Cali, D. Jonathan Sebastian-Cardenas, Shammya Shananda Saha, Shawn Chandler · 10 authors
This work presents a formal review of smart contracts, including definitions, technical requirements, and potential power and energy-related use cases. This includes in-depth discussions covering cybersecurity, legality and interoperability goals that must be taken into consideration by potential end-users. The paper presents a first attempt towards the standardization of smart contracts (SCs) within the field of power and energy as a work in progress activity under the IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) P2418.5 Working Group. This work also proposes a holistic, language-agnostic reference model that is intended to accelerate the adoption of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) by industry stakeholders by providing standardized processes. Finally, the paper discusses key takeaways that must continue to be developed to increase SC usage within the energy industry.
Blockchain - the decentralized global ledger technology provides a potentially attractive alternate to organize modern finance. Organizations use ERP software to integrate the management of all major business processes. Instead, blockchain can provide single version of the truth, in real time, regardless of constraints, to all participants across the organizational boundaries.
Financial technology (FinTech) and its related products are considered a major disruptive innovation in financial services, substantially elevating financial solutions and new business models. This book moves beyond the theoretical areas of FinTech to comprehensively explore the recent FinTech initiative scenarios with respect to processes, strategies, challenges, lessons learned, and outcomes within economic development as well as trade and investment. Covering a range of topics such as decentralized finance and global electronic commerce, it is ideal for industry professionals, business owners, consultants, practitioners, instructors, researchers, academicians, and students.
The purpose of this work is to study the investment capital markets by analysing the IPO and ICO procedures, identifying the main trends, leading sectors and comparing their volumes. The methodological basis was a retrospective analysis of the development of various forms of investment attraction (IPO and ICO). The main research methods were deduction, induction, synthesis and logical analysis. This article examined the main trends taking place in the IPO and ICO markets; key types of used blockchain platforms were identified; the leading countries and sectors in terms of the amount of funds raised are presented. The ICO market showed high growth rates in 2013â2018, but did not reach volumes comparable to the IPO market. Most of the projects that used the ICO (digital token issuance) procedures chose the Ethereum blockchain system as a platform, implemented projects in the fintech and IT industries, infrastructure development and decentralized applications (DApps). The leading states, residents, which have carried out the largest number of ICO procedures, are the USA, Singapore, United Kingdom and Hong Kong. In the IPO market, the largest volume of funds was attracted by projects from such sectors as finance, consumer services, oil and gas, industry and healthcare. The US remains the main platform chosen by companies for IPOs. The US is followed by the UK, China and Hong Kong
Non-fungible tokens provide ownership guarantees on an underlying asset to the holder of the token.NFT works on the block chain technology and does not need any intermediary or central authority to operate. We study one of possible applications of this technology â to have two parties enter into an options contract with a physical or digital asset as an under lier. The holder of the options contract can be validated through the NFT token.
Research and Development (R&D) in the pharmaceutical sector traditionally occurred in closed, siloed institutional settings. This approach was a function of a rights-oriented intellectual property model which framed access and reuse of data (data sharing) as a threat to rightsholders. However, a closed model of explorative collaboration is less suited to todayâs more complex scientific ecosystem, where external engagement and dynamic partnering with multiple actors and diverse information sources has become essential. As such, devising alternative approaches is vital in ensuring that opportunities for scientific advances are not lost or innovation stifled. This article introduces a hybrid contractual framework that combines the benefits of the automated functionality of smart contracts and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) embedded in a blockchain with more traditional rights-based licensing schemes. The presented framework is based on the outcome of an experimental pilot platform that enabled participants to store, find and reuse data following FAIR data principles. The platform documents real-world physical assets in the drug discovery of chemical molecules in an immutable digital ledger. More generally, smart contracts and NFTs point us towards an open and global collaborative platform for exploiting and advancing drug research assets. The resulting platform creates mechanisms for resolving issues regarding standardization, interoperability, and disclosure. As such, it overcomes many of the practical hurdles currently obstructing collaboration in pharmaceutical R&D, as well as providing a framework to address the central conflict in drug discovery, namely the demand for greater data sharing and the protection of rightsholder interests.
Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is an emerging financial service model based on blockchain technology. DeFi composability denotes the ability for different DeFi services to interact with one another resulting in new forms of financial services. The DeFi ecosystem is largely based on ERC-20 tokens that can represent the value of an asset. Collateralized assets in DeFi composability are locked and additional profit cannot be generated. In this paper, we propose a method to generate profit from locked assets by using ERC-721 Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and perpetual contracts. NFT represents the rights to a certain asset. A perpetual contract is a futures contract that does not have an expiration date. We propose perpetual contract NFT, a new form of NFT that can be used as collateral, which exploits perpetual futures contracts in the cryptocurrency derivatives market. Collateral needs to be provided to back the value of a perpetual contract. If the perpetual contract is minted as NFT, the resulting NFT represents the rights to the perpetual contract and its collateral. Therefore, the perpetual contact NFT itself can be used as collateral for DeFi composability. A proof-of-concept smart contract and a web application for perpetual contract NFT are provided to demonstrate its functionality. To validate the profitability of the perpetual contract NFT using a real-world scenario, we experiment with the position NFT of Uniswap v3 decentralized exchange. The position NFT is a form of perpetual contract NFT. Specifically, we present validation with three types of pools: stablecoins, stablecoin/wrapped tokens pair, and wrapped tokens.
This paper examines the efficiency of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) market through a search- theoretical lens. Search intensity associated with the process of identifying valuable startups is increasing in market granularity. Blockchain technology increases market granularity because asset tokenization lowers entry barriers. Lower-end entrants, however, increase aggregate search intensity but may lack search skills. The resulting search-related inefficiency creates a niche for intermediaries or institutional investors that specialize on search. Consistent with the theory, specialized crypto funds increase ICO market efficiency by reducing search frictions, inter alia, by shortening the time-to-funding and increasing the funding amount. At the same time, crypto funds extract sizable economic rents for their intermediation services. Overall, the study relates to the general trade-off between centralization and decentralization in entrepreneurial finance. It suggests that market frictions specific to early-stage crowdfunding of entrepreneurship may prevent âperfectlyâ Decentralized Finance (DeFi) markets from functioning efficiently.
This paper examines the efficiency of the Initial Coin Offering (ICO) market through a search- theoretical lens. Search intensity associated with the process of identifying valuable startups is increasing in market granularity. Blockchain technology increases market granularity because asset tokenization lowers entry barriers. Lower-end entrants, however, increase aggregate search intensity but may lack search skills. The resulting search-related inefficiency creates a niche for intermediaries or institutional investors that specialize on search. Consistent with the theory, specialized crypto funds increase ICO market efficiency by reducing search frictions, inter alia, by shortening the time-to-funding and increasing the funding amount. At the same time, crypto funds extract sizable economic rents for their intermediation services. Overall, the study relates to the general trade-off between centralization and decentralization in entrepreneurial finance. It suggests that market frictions specific to early-stage crowdfunding of entrepreneurship may prevent âperfectlyâ Decentralized Finance (DeFi) markets from functioning efficiently.