Please describe your proposed solution.
We aim to bring Traditional Financial institutions - Banks, Financial Institutions, Funds and Retail that use financial products onto the Cardano blockchain.
Our mission is to Democratize the Interest Rate Derivative Market by making these products affordable for Small Corporates and Retail Customers through:
- Low-Cost Daily Margining
- Secure & PrivateTrading
- Automated Smart Contracts
We are in talks with two banks and aim to use the deliverables from this proposal to advance the discussions.
<u>Background</u>
Recent interest rate hikes highlighted the risk of relying on cheap financing for too long and what can happen when interest rates increase rapidly. Sharp increases in interest rates can cause an unplanned increase in mortgage payments and much higher refinancing rates on every type of credit.
Consumers' current lack of access to the interest rates markets also limits their options for protecting against further rate increases, leaving them in a difficult position - exposed and without options.
We plan to bring interest rates markets onto the blockchain, so consumers and small corporates can access the same instruments as the large banks and large corporations.
The first step in the journey is to bring the markets onto the blockchain by offering existing banks a system that lets them manage the daily payments on these products (the settlement). The second step is to bring liquidity from the main financial players.
The target state is to lower costs by up to 100x for consumers and banks.
We aim to revolutionize the trading and settlement of Interest Rate Derivatives by leveraging the capabilities of the Cardano Blockchain. Our initiative is designed to democratize access to this multi-trillion dollar daily market, traditionally dominated by large financial institutions, corporations, and asset managers. By introducing a streamlined solution named BlockMargin, we intend to empower thousands of small companies and individuals to participate in the Interest Rate Derivatives market efficiently.
Challenges Faced by Small Entities:
Interest Rate Derivatives serve as crucial risk management tools for corporations and asset managers, enabling them to hedge interest rate risks associated with loans, bond issuance, and other liabilities. However, small corporates and private individuals often find themselves excluded from this market due to the intricate back-office processes involved, particularly the daily margining requirements. Without the resources to handle daily margining, these entities face inflated fees imposed by financial institutions, leading to elevated credit and operational risks.
The BlockMargin Solution:
BlockMargin, our innovative product, addresses these challenges by seamlessly integrating daily margining onto the blockchain. This transformation simplifies what was once a complex back-office operation into a user-friendly experience, reducing the barriers to entry for small businesses and individuals. Through a user-friendly dashboard, BlockMargin provides 24/7 visibility into positions, market values, and margin requirements. Users can effortlessly manage their positions, manually or automatically post and redeem margin from their crypto wallet.
Key Features of BlockMargin:
- Automated Monitoring: BlockMargin constantly monitors daily market prices, contract conditions, margin requirements, and settlement processes, mitigating risks and simplifying the trading experience.
- Empowering Small Entities: By bringing the power of daily margining to the fingertips of small businesses and individuals, BlockMargin facilitates a win-win situation, eliminating the need for excessive fees and minimizing credit and operational risks.
Significance of Margin Posting:
Understanding why margin matters is pivotal to appreciating the BlockMargin solution. Interest rate derivatives involve dynamic contract values that can turn positive or negative at any point. Margin posting becomes essential to prevent defaults and provide compensation if one party decides to exit the contract prematurely. Additionally, margin posting aids in avoiding litigation, as both parties can walk away, leaving margin with the counterparty to cover any adverse market moves.
Practical Example:
For instance, when a user buys an interest rate future as a hedge against a potential interest rate rise on a 500k mortgage, BlockMargin ensures smooth margin posting during the contract period. This example illustrates the convenience and risk mitigation benefits of our solution.
In summary, BlockMargin is poised to transform the Interest Rate Derivatives market by simplifying daily margining through blockchain technology, making it accessible to a broader audience and significantly reducing operational complexities for small entities.
Highlighting a few of the cashflows in the example:
- Day 0: rate is at 3% and the user posts an Initial Margin of $581, just over 0.1% of the notional amount.
- Day 1: rate dropped to 2.9% and the user needs to post an additional $104 as margin.
- Day 7, rate increases to 3.4% and the user can withdraw $320 margin from the contract.
- Day 15: rate has increased to 4.0%, the user closes the contract and gets paid $1,242 in addition to receiving their Initial Margin back
So, the user gets a positive cash flow at the end of the contract as the interest rate ended above 3%. If, at any time in between, the counterparty was to walk away, the user would keep the margin equivalent to the value of the contract.
As you can see, there is a lot of back and forth of margin posting throughout, and in traditional finance, this is done with bank transfers, which are expensive and need a dedicated team to perform. Whilst doing this on a blockchain is a transaction using a web wallet, and even that can be automated
<u>Building Blocks</u>
BlockMargin has 6 main components that we call the “building blocks”. The team at Dynamic Strategies will build these over the course of 6 months.
- The front end through which the user will interact with the smart contracts and the back-end services
- The Back-end will run the cardano node, cardano-db-sync, cardano-grapql and others services that exposes the up-to-date state of the blockchain to the user
- Smart contracts and the smart contract factory. The smart contract will codify the terms of the interest derivative transaction and will include conditions on when it can withdraw the funds locked inside. A smart contract factory will generate a new smart contract for each trade as each transaction will have slightly different characteristics (amount, start time, end time and withdrawal conditions). To the extent possible, we will use the Marlowe smart contract language, its runtime and the knowledge of the Marlowe team
<u>Midnight Platform</u>
We are currently in touch with two banks in the Netherlands who have shown an interest in exploring this idea further. They see the potential for a large cost saving and improved operational efficiency by moving part of their trading onto their blockchain. One of the high priority points on their wishlist is to ensure the privacy of transactions, as they do not want to expose their dealings with clients completely to the public.
Therefore, after delivering this project on Cardano mainnet, we will look to port it to the Midnight sidechain that is planned to launch on Cardano sometime in 2024 <https://midnight.iohk.io/>
Our product will be the prime candidate for Midnight when it launches with an existing client base. We have been accepted into the Midnight Dev Net
<u>Marlowe Smart Contracts</u>
We met with the Marlowe team at their product launch in Lisbon on 5th Jul 2023 and had a good discussion about Marlowe's capabilities to support different financial contracts. Marlowe is also blockchain agnostic; therefore, it can be ported to run on Midnight once it goes live. Therefore, we will aim to use Marlowe for our smart contracts and troubleshoot with the Marlowe team the edge cases. More on what Marlowe is here: <https://marlowe.iohk.io/>
Financial Derivative Contracts tend to require a programming language that offers sufficient flexibility to encode their multiple terms - and therefore, a Turing complete programming language such as Haskell is a desired starting point. However, since Marlowe was designed specifically for Financial contracts, we will test its ability to mould to different products. The Marlowe team has so far been forthcoming with explanations and examples of how it can solve certain edge cases. We look forward to leveraging their expertise throughout the project.