4 ms·

Daiwa to adopt blockchain for Myanmar stock trading

47 points by ayanray 10y ago

rtpg 10y ago
I started writing a furious "why would you even do this?"-style post, but this paragraph stood out: >Blockchain technology shares transaction records with multiple computers. Stock trading is typically saved in servers at bourses, but records cannot be referenced when communications infrastructure fails. >Using blockchain systems, brokerages can continue a minimum of operations, such as checking past transaction records and outstanding balances even when failures occur, although new transactions cannot be checked. The "blockchain as a distributed transaction DB" concept is more interesting than I thought, and it's probably really easy to get started given all the bitcoin tech around.
- cma 10y ago
  Traditional offline storage can do that too, right?
  - rtpg 10y ago
    well it's distributed, so just caching a DB is a bit of a tricky question. What are you going to be caching in your offline storage? If you just used flat-file CSVs, and don't want to re-download the entire DB twice a day, you want to now come up with syncing strategies, merging strategies, and probably conflict resolution. If you just have a blockchain, then you get all of this for free (so long as your data fits the blockchain shape). Though I imagine there's something else that can be used here as well...
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Why would you need merging and conflict resolution when there's a single source of truth? All you need is a stream of messages and some way to record them. If you want to distribute them P2P, add some metadata to sort them.
      - rtpg 10y ago
        per the article, in the Burma case, you have multiple banking branches with only intermittent internet connections, and therefore want to be able to work offline easily while still querying the (albeit stale) database state. Streams of messages don't work as well when you're multi-party, and the default state is offline, not online
        icebraining 10y ago
        In what way do stream of messages which are recorded by the receiver not work in this case, and how does the Blockchain differ?
    - tedunangst 10y ago
      That something else is called rsync.
    - cma 10y ago
      > Though I imagine there's something else that can be used here as well... Running transaction logs; you don't need to re download the entire DB twice a day. If you are disconnected, when you reconnect you give the last sequence number received. It is already built into FIX and other systems. Disconnects happen all the time in real trading systems and the ability to query past transactions doesn't go down.
  - eb0la 10y ago
    Exchanges are a textbook case of a shared ledger. They have separate systems that must work in sync with very low latency between them: order processing, the ledger (for clearing) and price advertising. The main advantage of a blockchain is with the ledger price advertising between exchange members comes free. I guess they can even implement OTC markets between peers, but I am not sure how do they plan to work with dark pools where parties want anonimity. Maybe they will just implement an internal blockchain with APIs for anonymous trading.
- Dylan16807 10y ago
  > The "blockchain as a distributed transaction DB" concept is more interesting than I thought Not particularly. It's using the wrong tool for the job. A distributed database is helpful in many ways, but you don't need an attached proof-of-work system.
  - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
    > Not particularly. It's using the wrong tool for the job. A distributed database is helpful in many ways, but you don't need an attached proof-of-work system. Blockchain doesn't imply PoW. You could consider each block minted with e.g. a M of N signature scheme, in the case of a stock-trading system you don't need open anonymous/participation and it's quite fine to rely on trusted parties.
    - Dylan16807 10y ago
      I suppose, but at that point you're really blurring the line between 'blockchain' and 'authenticated database logs', and it starts to become a mere buzzword.
      - icebraining 10y ago
        Yeah, every invoicing software in my country hash chains the documents for validation purposes (it's a requirement for SAF-T[1]), yet we don't call it a "blockchain". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T
        forgotpwtomain 10y ago
        Because there are no blocks, no transaction ordering and no distributed consensus?
        icebraining 10y ago
        A block is just a structure with a set of transactions, a date and the hash of the previous block. SAF-T has all that, except the "blocks" have a single transaction. Transaction ordering is provided by the chain of hashes - each record/block links to the previous, just like in the Blockchain. There is no distributed consensus, but that's the point - there doesn't seem to be here either.

47 points by ayanray 10y ago

rtpg 10y ago

I started writing a furious "why would you even do this?"-style post, but this paragraph stood out: >Blockchain technology shares transaction records with multiple computers. Stock trading is typically saved in servers at bourses, but records cannot be referenced when communications infrastructure fails. >Using blockchain systems, brokerages can continue a minimum of operations, such as checking past transaction records and outstanding balances even when failures occur, although new transactions cannot be checked. The "blockchain as a distributed transaction DB" concept is more interesting than I thought, and it's probably really easy to get started given all the bitcoin tech around.

cma 10y ago
Traditional offline storage can do that too, right?
- rtpg 10y ago
  well it's distributed, so just caching a DB is a bit of a tricky question. What are you going to be caching in your offline storage? If you just used flat-file CSVs, and don't want to re-download the entire DB twice a day, you want to now come up with syncing strategies, merging strategies, and probably conflict resolution. If you just have a blockchain, then you get all of this for free (so long as your data fits the blockchain shape). Though I imagine there's something else that can be used here as well...
  - icebraining 10y ago
    Why would you need merging and conflict resolution when there's a single source of truth? All you need is a stream of messages and some way to record them. If you want to distribute them P2P, add some metadata to sort them.
    - rtpg 10y ago
      per the article, in the Burma case, you have multiple banking branches with only intermittent internet connections, and therefore want to be able to work offline easily while still querying the (albeit stale) database state. Streams of messages don't work as well when you're multi-party, and the default state is offline, not online
      - icebraining 10y ago
        In what way do stream of messages which are recorded by the receiver not work in this case, and how does the Blockchain differ?
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    That something else is called rsync.
  - cma 10y ago
    > Though I imagine there's something else that can be used here as well... Running transaction logs; you don't need to re download the entire DB twice a day. If you are disconnected, when you reconnect you give the last sequence number received. It is already built into FIX and other systems. Disconnects happen all the time in real trading systems and the ability to query past transactions doesn't go down.
- eb0la 10y ago
  Exchanges are a textbook case of a shared ledger. They have separate systems that must work in sync with very low latency between them: order processing, the ledger (for clearing) and price advertising. The main advantage of a blockchain is with the ledger price advertising between exchange members comes free. I guess they can even implement OTC markets between peers, but I am not sure how do they plan to work with dark pools where parties want anonimity. Maybe they will just implement an internal blockchain with APIs for anonymous trading.
Dylan16807 10y ago
> The "blockchain as a distributed transaction DB" concept is more interesting than I thought Not particularly. It's using the wrong tool for the job. A distributed database is helpful in many ways, but you don't need an attached proof-of-work system.
- forgotpwtomain 10y ago
  > Not particularly. It's using the wrong tool for the job. A distributed database is helpful in many ways, but you don't need an attached proof-of-work system. Blockchain doesn't imply PoW. You could consider each block minted with e.g. a M of N signature scheme, in the case of a stock-trading system you don't need open anonymous/participation and it's quite fine to rely on trusted parties.
  - Dylan16807 10y ago
    I suppose, but at that point you're really blurring the line between 'blockchain' and 'authenticated database logs', and it starts to become a mere buzzword.
    - icebraining 10y ago
      Yeah, every invoicing software in my country hash chains the documents for validation purposes (it's a requirement for SAF-T[1]), yet we don't call it a "blockchain". [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAF-T
      - forgotpwtomain 10y ago
        Because there are no blocks, no transaction ordering and no distributed consensus?
        icebraining 10y ago
        A block is just a structure with a set of transactions, a date and the hash of the previous block. SAF-T has all that, except the "blocks" have a single transaction. Transaction ordering is provided by the chain of hashes - each record/block links to the previous, just like in the Blockchain. There is no distributed consensus, but that's the point - there doesn't seem to be here either.