Our equity tokens will be tradable. This is something we have been working on for more than two years. And we are happy that we were finally able to share the news with our Community. Together with our partners MSX, Binance and BitBay we are creating a security token trading ecosystem! We also announced with Founders Bank an additional company which will be doing an ETO on Neufund. In the mean time we’ve been travelling to conferences, meeting politicians and working on our platform design and code. Here’s our community update for July.
Collaborations with MSX, Binance and BitBay
We partner with Malta Stock Exchange and Binance and BitBay. The collaborations with MSX and Binance aim to create the first regulated decentralized global stock exchange. Together we will soon run a pilot project. We are working together with Binance towards building a complete Equity Token ecosystem where Neufund serves as a primary market and Binance provides the platform and technology for trading those tokens. We formed a strategic alliance with MSX which is a new FinTech and Blockchain subsidiary of Malta Stock Exchange. This alliance will help us bring Blockchain solutions and tokenized equity to established financial markets and benefit from experience and regulatory compliance of financial institutions.
Thanks to the partnership with BitBay investors will be able to buy and sell equity tokens with fiat currencies. The collaborations are yet another addition to the #BlockchainIsland ecosystem located in Malta, an EU member state.
Read more on our blog about the collaborations here and here. The announcement was widely covered by the international press. Here’s what John Biggs from TechCrunch says:
“This move is interesting in that it offers a parallel track to companies wishing to go public via token sales. While even the terminology isn’t completely hashed out in regards to the future of these systems, having a spot like Malta lead in the matter of token sales selling alongside equities is a solid decision. Malta is increasingly becoming the testbed for these sorts of experiments and, even if this is not yet a real project, it could create a turnkey solution for ICO launches on the island.”
Another company to do an ETO on Neufund
Once licensed, Founders Bank will become the first stable and high tech banking solution not only focused on founders, but also owned by them, bridging the gap between traditional financial world and innovative crypto companies. The team behind the project consists of experienced entrepreneurs and industry leaders with Mr Michael Bianchi serving as the Chairman of the company. Founders Bank has already secured investments from notable crypto companies, including Binance as the anchor investor. Find our more here.
Bloomberg wrote a story titled “Crypto Investors Try Forming First Regulated Bank in Malta.” Here Cindy Wang and Todd White write:
“The news comes a week after Malta passed three laws aimed at encouraging blockchain-based businesses to set up in the country. Binance said in its statement that the bills created a fertile environment for blockchain companies and cleared the uncertainties surrounding the market for decentralized assets.”
Germany ❤️ Blockchain
Dorothee Bär is Germany’s state minister for Digitalization. This month she invited digital leaders to discuss how DLT can be regulated. Amongst them: our CEO Zoe Adamovicz. The exchange seems to already bear its first fruits. Bär tweeted out a couple of days ago that Germany shouldn’t classify digital tokens as securities as that would slow down blockchain innovation. This would pave the way for security token offerings in Germany to become finally mainstream.
New Partnership with Coinfirm
Coinfirm’s regulatory technology helps us to streamline and automate compliance processes for blockchain based transactions. Coinfirm aims to set the global standards for Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) risk management, and Know-Your-Customer (KYC) regulation on cryptocurrency. Through their services Coinfirm enables a high level of transparency for the blockchain ecosystem.
Coinfirm’s platform uses proprietary algorithms and big data analysis to provide actionable data on blockchain transactions and parties. With the help of Coinfirm we will be able to perform automated AML-assessments, both when onboarding clients and when monitoring transactions in real-time. Coinfirm provides AML-risk reports and actionable results within a few seconds.
Neufund takes regulatory requirements serious. Working with Coinfirm adds another layer to enhance our KYC and AML procedure. Find out more about Coinfirm.
New Additions to our Platform
Design
Our designer Kirstyn McMullan has been busy working on the migration tool. Her final designs will be pushed to development quite soon. She designed a flow which walks users through a simple migration process of their funds. By this funds can be moved over to a KYC verified, external wallet. And there’s an additional function coming up. We are currently building a functionality which will allow users to invest from several external wallets and choose between them. Further, users will see how many NEU tokens they will approximately receive for their investment.
When designing interfaces to access external wallets it’s important to find the right balance. Our designer opted for a super user friendly design which simplifies the process. At the same time it includes hash numbers and block numbers. So it will be an educational experience for those being new to the world of crypto. Whereas regular users will find all the important information and functionalities they are used to from similar wallet functions.
We also started using the Ethereum Blockies library to generate user IDs. Those are visuals to represent your withdrawing and depositing address. The same standardized library is also used for MyEtherWallet. Additionally we will also have user friendly QR codes for depositing Ether.
On the investor side the designs for the portfolio page are finalized. Here users can see at which stage are their reserved assets are in and it allows them to download documents. On the issuer side we have finalized the documents dashboard. In one user interface all the agreements for the prospectus templates and generated documents can be found. There is also a prompting system for documents which still need to get uploaded. Legally binding documents will be uploaded to IPFS. here it’s equally important to educate our users to educate them about the specialties of IPFS. The aim is to letting them know why we use certain tools and how they work.
Currently, we are in the testing phase of the ETO forms and the company dashboard. We shared a sneak peak in the last community update. The main goal will be to auto generate legal documents such as term sheets, investor agreements and prospectuses based on forms.
Frontend
Our devs have been busy with a lot of the upcoming ETO dashboard. For example functionalities such as document uploading, connecting it with the backend, dashboard logic and preparing the ETO user story. By this we are achieving a full automation of generating term sheets. There will be a whole section for document management for token issuers on their campaign dashboard. And we estimate that this will cut up 90% of the manual work. Especially when it comes to filling out the prospectus, the pamphlet and the legally required documents to do a campaign.
We are also revolutionizing document management on IPFS. This gives transparency for each document, but it will also create a feeling of safety. Documents cannot be corrupted by governments or hackers. Because they are not stored in a centrally managed place. Instead they are distributed among multiple nods, which works similar like a torrent file system. This gives full immutability to the document storage. The hash of the document which was uploaded to the IPFS is then used in a smart contract. Like this documents can be signed and proofed.
Backend
On the Backend we’ve been working on message queuing. Using RabbitMQ we regulate the communication between different components of the platform. This allows user databases to run on several instances.
We also fixed some bugs in the KYC and sign up process. For example people who committed through ICBM couldn’t log in to platform with ledger. Therefore we changed the rules of how we can use ledger. Because ledger has different derivations. During ICBM all those derivations could be used. But in the platform it was too strict. Now we are fully compatible with bip 44 for information and bip 32 for encoding.
Events & Conferences
Our Blockchain Reporter Marlene Ronstedt moderated a panel during the Tech Crunch Blockchain Sessions on the ways in which consumers will own and monetise their own data in the near future through their cell phone, car, and life’s other essential gadgets. Here’s her takeaway from the conference.
Some other events you could find Neufunders at: Our VP Engineering Sergiej Rewiakin spoke at the Blockchain Nights at Humboldt University Berlin and at the Blockchain Visionnaire Summit. “Blockchain is too big to die,” said our legal partner André Eggert during the BCG Digital Ventures Meetup. And our lead dev Krzysztof Kaczor spoke at Dapp Con about creating “Type Safe DApps with Typescript and TypeChain”. He did a similar talk in Dresden at the Blockchain Meetup Saxony where he was joined by Marlene.
Podcasts and Articles
We recorded our first episode of TokenUp this last month. You can give it a listen on iTunes, Spottify and Stitcher. Here Alex Molé and Marlene Ronstedt cover the security token landscape and share with you news and their insights.
We also wrote a couple of blog posts and articles:
- Our legal partner Andre wrote together with Marlene a story about Maltese DLT regulation for Coindesk. They write:
“Would Malta retain its status as the “blockchain island” once Brussels has adopted similar policies? Definitely, we think. Beyond the law, the country is working on creating an entire blockchain ecosystem. This includes new programs and departments at universities, as well as co-working spaces aimed at blockchain companies.”
Jeremi Jak our Communications Manager explains Neufund’s values to our community in this post:
“We could have done it differently, like many security token offerings platforms which are centralized. But we know, that in order to get to the moon we need a lot of power. Community power, which lies in decentralized structures.”
And our VP Ventures Agnieszka Sarnecka has started an exciting series on the demystification of the prospectus. This is definitely worth a read for everyone who is considering an ETO on Neufund but afraid of the prospectus.
“German authorities are quite protective, that’s why they have some strict regulations in place when it comes to how the prospectus needs to be set up. However you shouldn’t be scared of them… More than anything you should consider BaFin being your guardian angel.”
And this one here, from Alex made it into the Week in Ethereum newsletter!
Alex wrote a summary on the security token exchange landscape. A space which is just about to develop and which bares a huge potential for the future of finance.
“ It seems with every week that passes, a new security token exchange is born. As liquidity remains one of the biggest roadblocks to widespread adoption of security tokens, this is both a welcome and important development for our emerging industry.”
We’re hiring!
If you got interested in the work we’re doing here at Neufund take a look at our job board. We’re currently hiring for several positions for our Berlin office. Join the Neufund team! Find out more here.
Join our telegram chat if you have questions or want to meet the Neufund community and team. You can also submit a question here. Or visit our subreddit to join the conversation. Our Freshdesk is a great resource to learn the Neufund basics.
