The IRC-16 Standard
Welcome to this week’s edition of the RHIZOME Wire!
A new standard
This week, ICON put out an announcement that the team has officially published a reference implementation for the IRC-16 token standard.
According to the announcement:
The IRC-16 token standard interface was first proposed in 2019, with the goal to support the development of tokenized securities on the ICON blockchain.
…
The security token standard describes how to represent full ownership or split ownership of a particular asset. Through this standard, ownership of certain assets can be issued, represented, tracked, viewed, divided, privately owned and transferred. It may also be entrusted to a third party provider and may be controlled under strict authorization.
For those who have been following cryptocurrency for a while, tokenized assets aren’t a particularly new idea. If you don’t fall into that category — or just haven’t come across the concept, here’s how BNY Mellon describes tokenization:
Fundamentally, tokenization is the process of converting rights – or a unit of asset ownership – into a digital token on a blockchain. Tokenization can be applied to regulated financial instruments such as equities and bonds, tangible assets such as real estate, precious metals, and even to Tokenization of Copyright to works of authorship (e.g., music) intellectual property. The benefits of tokenization are particularly apparent for assets not currently traded electronically, such as works of art or exotic cars, as well as those needing increased transparency in payment and data flows to improve their liquidity and tradability.
This is an important innovation for the financial industry, primarily because, to a certain extent, it democratizes investment opportunity, leading to greater access for everyday people, while also creating a broader investor base, which increases liquidity and makes markets more efficient.
Here’s more from BNY Mellon, explaining how this is the case:
Selling 1/20 of an apartment or a fraction of a company share is not currently practicable. However, if that asset is tokenized, this limitation is removed, and it becomes possible to buy or sell tokens representing fractions of ownership, allowing a far broader investor base to participate.
The article goes on to describe a number of benefits for tokenization, so do give the entire piece.
To be clear, ICON is far from the first project to implement tokenization. Many already have — perhaps most notably, Tezos, another popular project, has placed a focus on tokenization for some time.
However, just because other projects have focused on tokenization, doesn’t mean ICON isn’t bringing something unique to the table.
Remember, ICON’s core promise is its interoperability.
For instance, by now we’re all aware of the promise of myID. Let’s pretend that you’ve purchased a tokenized share of a rare piece of art as part of an online auction. In order to claim your share of ownership, you could utilize myID in order to verify your identity in an immutable manner.
In fact, with my-ID’s strong support and participation among the Korean financial community as a whole, there are likely many sophisticated use cases that may come about over the long-term when it comes to tokenization. If many of these financial institutions are already a part of the ICON network due to their participation in my-ID, it starts to become a no-brainer to also utilize ICON for the tokenization of assets.
And that’s when things start to get really interesting.
News from ICON World
Balanced shares the benefits of using Balanced for ICX holders in their latest blog post
Small business and ICON!
ICON Foundation shares their July 2020 roadmap update
Over 2M requests generated through Cloudfare for RHIZOME’s new citizen node endpoint
Markus Jun highlights ICONLOOP and ICON in an insightful thread
MyID will be released in August!
ICON Hyperhack gets featured on the front page of devpost
NEOPLY joins as a P-Rep
Blockchain Industry News
German Regulator Seizes Crypto ATMs - CoinDesk
On Wednesday, authorities began shuttering "Shitcoins Club" storefronts and seizing its bitcoin ATM machinery, a BaFin official confirmed with CoinDesk, for allegedly operating without banking or proprietary trading licenses.
Report: XRP Sales Increase 17x Compared to Last Quarter - BTC Manager
In Q2 2020, total XRP sales were $32.55 million vs. $1.75 million in the previous quarter. Ripple continued the pause of programmatic sales, focusing solely on its over-the-counter (OTC) sales as part of providing increased XRP liquidity to RippleNet’s On-Demand Liquidity (ODL) customers.
Goldman Sachs is considering its own crypto, likely a stablecoin - Decrypt
Mathew McDermott, 46, who started working for the bank last month, said Goldman Sachs is “exploring the commercial viability of creating our own fiat digital token,” in an interview with CNBC today.
‘The Enron of Europe’ — What We Know So Far About the Wirecard Scandal - Cointelegraph
Despite Braun’s arrest and the firm in administration, not all loose ends in the Wirecard scandal have been so well tied off. Chief operating officer Jan Marsalek is reportedly hiding out in Russia, financing his fugitive status with Bitcoin (BTC) he was able to transfer from Dubai.