DIA - Whitepaper Mar 19 Clean · 4.1 How Blockchain Can Revolutionize Financial Data Usage.....12...
Transcript of DIA - Whitepaper Mar 19 Clean · 4.1 How Blockchain Can Revolutionize Financial Data Usage.....12...
Decentralized, efficient and accessible financial market data
Whitepaper v.0.92
Abstract: By building a trustworthy, crowdsourced, and efficient financial information
ecosystem, DIA (Decentralized Information Asset) will enable all stakeholders to gather and validate information about digital and traditional financial assets
THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT A PROSPECTUS
Please read the disclaimer carefully
DIA Whitepaper – Page 1
CONTENTS Executive summary .......................................................................................................................... 2 1 Background/Industry ........................................................................................................... 4
1.1 Mission ............................................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Industry and competition ...................................................................................................... 4 1.3 Target Market ..................................................................................................................... 5
2 Challenges in the status quo ................................................................................................. 7 3 Competitive Landscape ........................................................................................................ 9 4 Solution: Decentralised information Asset .......................................................................... 12
4.1 How Blockchain Can Revolutionize Financial Data Usage ................................................... 12 4.2 The DIA Solution .............................................................................................................. 13 4.3 DIA: Aligned Interests for the Open-Source Data Platform .................................................. 15 4.4 Decentralised Data Generation ........................................................................................... 18 4.5 Dispute Mechanism ........................................................................................................... 21 4.6 New Nash Equilibrium and Pareto Optimality Created By DIA ............................................ 23 4.7 GDPR Compliance ............................................................................................................ 25
5 Token economy .................................................................................................................. 26 5.1 Token Design .................................................................................................................... 26 5.2 ICO Termsheet .................................................................................................................. 28 5.3 DIA Token Distribution ..................................................................................................... 29 5.4 Use of Funds ..................................................................................................................... 30 5.5 How to Purchase the DIA Token ........................................................................................ 32
6 Technology ......................................................................................................................... 33 6.1 Bounty System .................................................................................................................. 33 6.2 Decentralized Financial Applications .................................................................................. 34 6.3 Dispute System ................................................................................................................. 34 6.4 DIA Data Organization ...................................................................................................... 35 6.5 DIA High-Frequency Off-Chain Database ........................................................................... 35 6.6 DIA API ........................................................................................................................... 37 6.7 DIA Database Hashing ...................................................................................................... 38 6.8 Scraping Network .............................................................................................................. 38
7 Governance ........................................................................................................................ 40 8 The Founding Association Members .................................................................................. 41
8.1 The Role of BlockState AG ................................................................................................ 42 9 Roadmap and milestones ................................................................................................... 43 10 Business benefits ................................................................................................................. 44 11 Communication .................................................................................................................. 45 12 Team .................................................................................................................................. 47
12.1 Association Board ............................................................................................................. 47 12.2 Founding Association Members ......................................................................................... 48
13 List of Abbreviations .......................................................................................................... 52 14 References: ........................................................................................................................ 53 15 List of Figures: ................................................................................................................... 54 16 Disclaimer & key risk factors ............................................................................................. 55
DIA Whitepaper – Page 2
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Decentralized Information Asset (DIA) is creating an open-source, crowd-driven platform powered by blockchain technology that enables to supply, share and use digital financial asset and other financial data.
Our vision is to democratize provision, access and usage of digital financial asset data, as Wikipedia did in the broader information space for central encyclopaedias.
DIA is designed for individuals and entities that rely on accurate financial market data in their decision making, or who seek to gain a trading advantage from accurate digital financial assets data. This includes individual traders, financial service businesses, family offices, funds, financial institutions, and specialised app developers. Incumbent financial information vendors offer
proprietary products without transparency, and only little digital financial asset data. Existing information platforms do not provide externally validated or enhanced data and their centralized information feeds are not tracked intelligently to ensure authenticity.
DIA Solution
User Role(s) Decision
Making and
Governance
Quality
Management
Audit Trail Cost Bridging to
Financial
Instruments
Centralized Financial Data Providers
Purchase, usage
Central, non-transparent
Proprietary Possibility of manipulation,
central database
Medium to high
Term-sheet, API, manual
input
DIA Request, validation, curation,
usage
Decentral, open-source
Crowd-driven Immutable, decentral storage
Free Oracle, API
DIA Whitepaper – Page 3
Economists from Adam Smith to representatives of New Institutional Economics such as Acemoglu and Robinson [1] were confident that trust between agents is one of the most important factors in creating stable markets and fosters a good climate for investing. DIA is creating an open-source platform for individuals and institutions to provide, analyse and purchase financial data. By
making validated financial data easily accessible, DIA will improve transparency in digital asset and other financial markets. Centralized traditional data providers (e.g. Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters) create high barriers of entry, while the source of data as well as methodology used is not always transparent. Trust in the data purely relies on the provider’s reputation and central verification. Other centralized digital assets data providers, like CoinMarketCap, inherited the same concept, “non-transparency by design”. The resulting inefficiencies were often observable, for example during LIBOR and BTC market manipulations in recent years [2]. DIA’s crowd-validated, open-source approach implements transparency-by-design and solves these inherent problems. Our goal is to provide an information platform for everyone to create and validate financial instruments and investment products using open-source, decentralised, validated financial information. Over the next years, we aim not only to transform the market but also the way financial market participants gather, discuss and use financial data.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 4
1 BACKGROUND/INDUSTRY
1.1 Mission
Perfect competition is one of the foundational concepts of modern mainstream economics. It is
grounded in the assumption of perfect information and rationality of agents. Based on the work of Kahneman and Tversky [3] [4], we know that perfect information and strictly rational decision making is far from reality in most economic contexts. New technologies such as smart contracts, can however create unprecedented transparency and enable more efficient and precise decision making, closing the gap between mainstream theory and practice.
DIA’s mission is to enable the creation and use of reliable validated financial market data on the Ethereum blockchain. Pursuing this mission will lead to a change in today’s paradigm, where the only choice is between expensive financial data or free, unvalidated financial data.
1.2 Industry and competition
Financial products and services need to be based on reliable and high-quality real-time data to enable intelligent decisions. Information services in traditional financial markets are mostly provided by a handful of incumbent players, which process 60 billion information pieces per day [5]. The traditional financial data market is operated by the duopolistic actors Bloomberg and Thompson Reuters [5]. However, the market share of these two vendors is shrinking due to entrance of new competitors, market regulations implemented after the 2008 financial crisis and a perceived lack of product innovation (e.g. Bloomberg offers the same data terminal as 30 years ago) [6].
These subscription services offer information from multiple different sources that stakeholders use e.g. for charting, fundamental analysis and trading. In the digital asset investment space, there are
only a few platforms that claim to offer a comparable, comprehensive and trustworthy level of market information to support the creation of reliable applications or inform about trading activity in digital assets.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 5
A recent study revealed that the most popular digital asset market website1, CoinMarketCap, which is free to use, contains wrong information for up to 75% of the featured digital assets [7]. Many alternative sites covering trading activity (e.g. Onchainfx, CoinCodex, CryptoCompare) scrape their data from CoinMarketCap, whereas most other data feed providers do not publish their
sources or methodologies for presenting information. In May 2018, Bloomberg together with Galaxy Digital Capital Management, announced an index tracker of the top ten USD-traded digital assets. The index information remains limited to subscribers and the algorithms are defined in-house, without transparency. A growing number of CoinMarketCap alternatives proposes to abandon the model of centralized market information completely. The company Santiment, for example, feeds market data, sentiment analysis, and blockchain activity. Another alternative, Cindicator, uses collective intelligence and AI to create indicators for digital asset investment decisions. Messari relies on volunteer analysts who organize information about different tokens.
In contrast, crowdsourced financial information platforms offer multi-channel information that is more transparent, since data is verified by multiple users. They aim to create more trustworthy data to enhance digital asset management. However, these platforms still act as centralized data
managers, offering user curated information feeds. None of these platforms authenticate information about pricing, events or payments to provide transparent and reliable validation of the sources of market data.
1.3 Target Market
The overall market for DIA’s platform has an annual revenue of $28.5 billion [6] and targets individuals as well as entities that rely on accurate financial market data. Key providers and respective market shares are shown in in Figure 1. The primary market segmentation includes corporates and large companies who already consume existing financial data from Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters and other providers.
1 Recently ranked as #44 out of all US websites by Alexa
DIA Whitepaper – Page 6
TOP 9 REVENUE
US$M 2010 2017 % Change
BLOOMBERG 6,900 9,400 36.23%
FACTSET 641 1,221 90.48%
ICE DATA 797 2,084 161.60%
IHS-MARKIT 1,726 3,600 108.59%
MOODY’S 2,032 4,204 106.89%
MORNINGSTAR 555 912 64.17%
MSCI 604 1,274 110.85%
S&P GMI 3,639 6,063 66.61%
THOMSON
REUTERS
13,070 11,333 -13.29%
TOTAL US$M 29,964 40,091 33.80%
Figure 1: Key players in the financial data market 2010 - 2017, Source: Market Dataguru, 2018
Other market segments seeking validated information include individual traders, financial service businesses, family offices, hedge funds, private equity funds, financial institutions, and application developers.
There are multiple additional proof-points to indicate the large market potential for digital financial
asset data within the broader financial data market. There are now over 250 hedge funds focusing solely on digital assets, with $3.5 billion - $5 billion in assets under management [8]. Furthermore, there are ~1 million subscribers to reddit’s digital asset information channel and ~6 million unique active users of digital asset wallets [9]. Finally, a new market segment is emerging – the new financial elites of the digital asset markets – who seek access to a data advantage and an unknown number of trading ‘whales’ that dominate digital asset markets.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 7
2 CHALLENGES IN THE STATUS QUO
Democratic access to sophisticated financial data, comparable to access to expensive encyclopaedias a decade ago, is still limited by high monetary barriers of entry. This creates asymmetric information advantages for bigger actors in the market. Lack of access to information creates detrimental conditions for smaller and individual investors. Incumbent data providers offer an enormous variety of historical and real-time quality financial data and newsfeeds (amongst many other services), often highly valued by their customers. They have one drawback however –
they cost over $20,0002 a year per subscription [10]. Therefore, access by medium, small and micro companies is limited due to high cost3. Additionally, data sources and applied calculation methodologies, are not transparent. Trust in the information purely relies on the provider’s reputation and central verification. A challenge, particular to the digital financial asset space, remains that a variety of traditional media outlets do not cover the digital asset ecosystem. It is still perceived as untrustworthy due to its non-transparency, current volatility and the possibility of usage for illegal purposes [11]. A growing lack of confidence in the validity of basic digital asset market information prevents investors, companies and the overall market from making informed decisions about their investments. Current information about digital assets is scattered across many different sources and media and it is next to impossible to frequently verify such dispersed data. In some cases, ambiguous choices about presenting market information are losing investors significant amounts of money. Weak quality data can also impact the economy as a whole – IBM estimates $3,1 trillion [12] as the cost of bad quality data in the USA alone. The conventional financial trading ecosystem has similar problems, such as the outright rigging of market information, in the case of the LIBOR scandal [2] that negatively affected enormous
numbers of investors. The 2008 financial crisis was itself the result of non-transparent financial
2 Exact price of services is not transparent 3 Even big multinational companies and banks have problems with access to quality financial data – the cost of Bloomberg terminals for just 100 employees is around $2,000 000 annually
DIA Whitepaper – Page 8
products, demonstrating the need for an industry-wide change in regard to understanding financial information and its source [13]. Current crowdsourced platforms cannot bring in new stakeholders to the digital asset market that
seek the same types of financial products available in the traditional financial markets, where there is high confidence in market data. The central challenge to solve, is that there is no inherent incentive to share data or analysis with other market participants. This can easily be shown within a classic reassurance game as show in Figure 2.
Do not contribute Contribute
Do not contribute 0, 0 4, -4
Contribute -4, 4 4, 4
Figure 2: Classical two-player reassurance game
Without creating trust, the Nash equilibrium is in cell (0,0) – the situation cannot develop further, as none of the agents is going to risk contributing without getting something in return. For global public goods one way of resolving this kind of dilemma (achieving Pareto optimality – entering cell (4,4)) is a powerful player taking a risky action (e.g. contributing data to entice others to do the same). This kind of situation was present while dealing with ozone layer depletion (CFC emissions) [14] when the USA took preventive action and other actors followed.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 9
3 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE
The competitive landscape for digital asset financial data includes existing traditional data and asset management providers and a small number of focused digital financial asset players. Key angles of differentiation for a trustworthy digital financial asset data provider are:
• Decentralization: creation of a participatory environment where data is contributed, validated, and monitored by the community
• Validation: a validation mechanism allows to create reliable services on top of verified data
• Transparency: a blockchain-based validation database and documentation of applied methodology to foster a fully transparent ecosystem
FINANCIAL
DATA
CENTRALIZED
DIGITAL ASSET MARKET DATA
DIGITAL
FINANCIAL ASSET MARKET DATA
PREDICTION
MARKET PLATFORM
DECENTRALIZED
FINANCIAL DATA
Bloomberg, Markit, Thomson
Reuters
Coinmarketcap, Coinbase,
Santiment, Cindicator, Messari, DIRT
Augur, Gnosis
CROWD ROLE IN
DATA
PROVISION
None None Volunteer Analysis Verification and Validation
Incentivization, Verification and
Validation
ORACLE/SMART
CONTRACT
SOLUTION
N N N N Y
DECENTRALIZED
PRICING
N N Y Y Y
DECENTRALIZED
INFORMATION
PROCUREMENT
N N N Y Y
VERIFIED DATA Y N Y Y Y
DIA ADVANTAGE
Immutable,
tokenized and
open
Verified,
transparent,
accessible and
integrated
Decentralized,
immutable and
connected to
traditional Finance
Specialized in
finance data
bridging to fin.
instruments
Figure 3: Advantages of DIA platform versus other provider segments
DIA Whitepaper – Page 10
DIA has distinct competitive advantages versus all other player segments, as further highlighted in Figure 3.
Incumbent financial information vendors validate traditional market data centrally but cannot serve consumers with verified digital financial asset market information. Most traditional financial data are sourced from regulatory filings or regulated sources such as stock exchange feeds. Such regulation is presently absent for digital financial assets, which means that traditional vendors cannot easily apply their business models in this new market. Some companies (Bloomberg) and investment funds analyse digital financial asset market data in-house but do not seek to sell their proprietary data or release it to the general public. These data sets are therefore not transparent and restricted to a handful of paying users. So-called crowdsourced digital market information platforms (Cindicator, Santiment) are verified by multiple users but are restricted in scope by their centrally curated information feeds. None authenticate information about pricing, events or payments on the blockchain.
General prediction market platforms such as Augur and Gnosis allow users to create new, decentralized prediction markets for a broad range of sectors (e.g. sports, art, politics). These do not offer any in-depth market knowledge or links with the financial ecosystem and are neither built specifically for B2B nor B2C markets or the, in our view, future of financial markets connecting oracles to tradable financial instruments through smart-contract structuring. Although free to users, so far, none of the existing digital financial asset market information providers have presented viable models for validation and community participation in the collection and validation of data. This allows an attractive positioning of the DIA platform vs. all existing player segments as shown in Figure 4. DIA is the only crowd-sourced, decentral and free to use platform that offers digital financial asset market data at scale.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 11
Financial Data Centralized Digital Asset Market Data
Digital Asset Market Data
Prediction Market
Platform
Decentralized Financial Data
Entity Bloomberg Coinmarketcap Santiment Augur
Contributors Internal Analysts Internal Analysts Internal
Analysts Crowd-sourced
Crowd-sourced
Change request Central Central Central Decentral Decentral
Data points >10bn >100mn >50mn >1mn >10bn 4
Price for data
access
$2600/month Free $20/month Free Free
Figure 4: Positioning of the DIA platform
4 Expected by Q4 2019
DIA Whitepaper – Page 12
4 SOLUTION: DECENTRALISED INFORMATION ASSET
4.1 How Blockchain Can Revolutionize Financial Data Usage
Audit Trail Connection to financial
instruments data
Decision making
User Role Incentive to contribute
Centralized Possibility of manipulation, central database
Term-Sheet, API, Manual input
Centralized, opaque
Purchase, usage FIAT money, reputation
Decentralized Immutable, decentral storage
Oracle, API Decentral, transparent
Creation, curation, usage,
Community tokens, reputation
Figure 5: Centralized vs decentralised financial data provision
The decentralized nature of blockchain technology poses an ideal fit for building a transparent and
trustworthy financial market information platform. Blockchain is by design an open, shared ecosystem. By allowing multiple stakeholders to contribute and analyse financial information, everyone benefits from a broader crowd-sourced and validated set of market information. Figure 5 highlights the essential differences of centralized and decentralized financial data provision. Key advantages of using blockchain technology in provision and usage of financial data are:
• Smart contracts in combination with oracle solutions for validated financial data enable self-
sustaining and transparent digital financial instruments
• Blockchain’s global ledger functionality ensures that crowd-validated financial data is
immutably logged via a democratized, open-source and crowd-driven contribution. Immutable records on blockchain allow to validate historical data and its sources
• Validated market information can enable all stakeholders to assess risk and reward.
Management of reputation can be tracked systematically, so that, over time, data sources and data validators achieve reputation scores that accurately reflect their reliability
DIA Whitepaper – Page 13
• Blockchain technology allows to implement smart contracts that create a Peer to Peer (P2P)
financial information market to automate charging for data and payments for contributions to the system
• With the growing community the quality and quantity of data will continuously improve and
access to sophisticated and exotic (in terms of scarcity) data is possible
4.2 The DIA Solution
While traditional centralized solutions rely mostly on in-house data sourcing and validation, the DIA approach uses a combination of token incentives, crowd-sourced data validation as well as game-theory optimised flows to align the interests of users. These mechanisms are designed to induce commission of quality data, deter spamming and foster maintenance of critical data
infrastructure without gaming the DIA system for personal benefit.
Through a trustworthy, crowd-sourced and efficient digital financial assets market information ecosystem, DIA will enable multiple stakeholders to request, maintain and validate digital (and other) asset financial data resulting in more informed decisions. A shared market information ecosystem not only enables stakeholders to validate and use financial data, but also to build secure financial products without the need for auditing by third parties.
DIA provides a decentralized solution with five core capabilities:
1. Financial data collection: The DIA platform collects market data and publishes it through data feeds provided by third party services designed for use in dApps. Data providers can be individuals or entities who own, handle or produce data or know where it can be obtained (e.g. from different APIs), such as professional traders, data analysts, traditional data providers, official data suppliers (World Bank, ECB etc.).
2. Immutable data storage: The platform stores datasets off-chain in the DIA database, while storing the hashes on the Ethereum chain. The platform is secured through a hash, which will be embedded into the DIA token, thusly creating a secure link between the platform, data and the token itself. This means that whenever anyone modifies the financial information database, the modification will be tracked and immediately available for anyone using the code.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 14
3. Crowd-based data validation: The DIA platform design provides a monetary incentive to source and validate information requests. Therefore, and due to the open architecture, many different stakeholders will work on data validation – such as developers, reporters, crowd-auditors, interested stakeholders and data analysts.
4. Open-source access to data: Data can be accessed for a variety of applications through oracles/interfaces/APIs/tables by dApps, quant traders, (macro) hedge funds, brokerages, research analysts, risk managers, FX traders, economists, communication and consultancy agencies, digital asset investors, miners and exchanges and individuals.
5. Token Utilisation: The DIA platform and token provides financial incentives for data verification and an ecosystem for digital assets that enables entities to use DIA tokens for
enhancing security, data sourcing, validation as well as calculation.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 15
4.3 DIA: Aligned Interests for the Open-Source Data Platform
DIA does not seek to privatise or monopolise digital asset financial data but aims to provide a fair level of symmetric information to a broad audience. Therefore, DIA was established as a Swiss based non-profit association aiming to democratize access to financial data, as Wikipedia did in the broader information space for central encyclopaedias.
DIA’s model is to provide a hybrid on-chain/off-chain IT infrastructure and ecosystem with decentralized data validation and governance to enable accurate and validated data. This will ultimately improve data quality and transparency in the digital assets-, and open traditional financial markets. A schematic overview of the platform architecture is shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Schematic overview of the DIA ecosystem
dAPPS
Free API & Oracle usage for all historical data
DIA Tokens for live-access
DIA data layer
Data Providers: Input request and management
Developers & Analysts: Verification & Curation
DIA Association: API & Oracle Output
Ethereum Blockchain
Hashing Audit trail
DIA Whitepaper – Page 16
To enable these desired outcomes, DIA can be used in three ways, further highlighted in Figure 7:
• Data provision: Acting on bounties posted or on non-monetary self-interest, data providers
generate the basis of DIA’s database and quality.
- Raw Data and APIs: Data providers can upload data, stipulate terms of use and share it in whatever way they see fit, accessing the platform through an API. This can range from accessing public APIs legal to use or the supply of proprietary data sets via integration
- Algorithms: In addition to raw data and API connectors, data providers can provide
algorithms using the existing off-chain API data as well as oracles to develop quantitative, open-source models on top of the existing DIA data
• Developers & Analysts: Data analysts are individuals or institutions that continuously
improve the quality of our platform and critically review as well as verify new and existing datasets and algorithms
- Data analysts offer a value-added service to the network by performing data cleansing,
transformation, and normalization across multiple datasets.
- Curators can gain disputed bounties and stakes for spotting errors, bugs, manipulation attempts or security flaws in DIA’s off-chain database and on-chain connectors as well as improving and building the overall platform structure and security.
• dApps: The use and application side of validated financial data on DIA
- Based on the open-source model, every individual or entity can connect to the DIA financial database to use historical financial data for products and services with a 15-minute delay implemented
- While accessing historical financial data is free of charge, DIA tokens are charged for live
pricing access to the DIA database or to specific oracles
- DIA has created a first MVP dApp on base of decentralized data which can be found under this link: https://coinhub.DIAdata.org
DIA Whitepaper – Page 17
Figure 7: Stakeholder comparison within DIA
Data Providers Developers & Analysts dApps Stakeholder
description
Developers, private and public institutions with proprietary data
Data analysts, bounty hunters, delegates
Financial applications
Interaction with
DIA database
Submission of data sources as well as algorithms
Validation of existing and new data sources as well as algorithms.
Usage of DIA off-chain database API and on-chain oracles
Interaction with
DIA Token
Incentivizes via bounty payments
Dispute during data submission phase. Staking, dispute resolution.
• Payment with DIA Tokens for live-data feed
• Bounty for requested, validated data
Example:
BTC/EUR
future spot
price
Sourcing EUR/USD price from ECB, Future BTC/USD price from CBOE BXT
Identification of error in sourcing, algorithm back-testing and improvement
Oracle solution, Trading algorithm using BTC/ EUR/USD arbitrage opportunities and many more
DIA Whitepaper – Page 18
4.4 Decentralised Data Generation
Figure 8: Data flow and dispute mechanism in DIA
DIA aims to establish a non-zero-sum game situation for all stakeholders. This is achieved by best-
practice data input, editing and validation techniques in combination with token specific technical as well as economic incentives (e.g. staking). These mechanisms allow to keep interests of all
DATA REQUEST VIA BOUNTY
DATA COMMIT
DATA APPROVAL BY REQUESTOR
Y
DIA DATABASE COMMIT
DISPUTE OPENED
REJECTION OF COMMIT
ARBITRARY DELEGATE SELECTION & VOTING
N
90%: BOUNTY FOR DATA REQUEST TICKET
9% FOR REQUEST SPECIFIC DISPUTES
1% FOR DISPUTE WALLET
STAKING BY CROWD
Y N
Y N
1
2
4
5
3
DIA Whitepaper – Page 19
stakeholders of the network aligned. Figure 8 gives a schematic overview of the data commit process on the DIA platform.
# Process Involved Parties Interaction Risks Mitigation 1. Submission of data
request DApps, DIA Tokenholders Set bounty Malicious data request,
illegal data request
Automated data request
scanning, automated and manual checks
2. Bounty split in request
specific bounties and
general bounty
DIA, Data Analyst none Security breach, opaque
monetary flow
Smart-Contract
3. Data commit by Data
Data Analyst, DIA
Commit data source
or algorithm to GitHub
Copy commits FiFo (First-in-first out)
3.1 Expansive Size Algorithmic sample
duplication, data check
3.2 Future compliance of dataset
Constant monitoring of source/backlisting of DNS/IP
3.3 Stolen data Automatic gpl3 licence check of commit
3.4 Spam Collaborative bounty, multiple parties can work on one request
3.5 Data commit by Data
Analyst Tokenholders, Regulatory department
Personal Data in Dataset (GDPR)
Algorithmic check of commit
3.6 Data approval by Requestor
Data Analyst, Data Requestor
Commit data source or algorithm to
GitHub
Bilateral attempt to commit manipulated
source data
Dispute/Staking mechanism
3.7 Data approval by Requestor
DApps, DIA Tokenholders Approve/Reject commit
Dispute correct data Dispute/Staking mechanism
4. Dispute All Stakeholders, Delegate Dispute Y/N 51% attack Arbitrary delegate selection & voting on
disputes
4.1 Dispute
All Stakeholders/external Staking of coins Mass staking Min. Staking requirement
4.2 Arbitrary delegate COT Tokenholders Voting Purchase or Delegates,
manipulation of outcome
Arbitrary, anonymous
selection and voting
Figure 9: Risks and mitigation processes
DIA Whitepaper – Page 20
Within the DIA game-theoretical system, stakeholders are incentivized to create and maintain an open-source, financial database. The DIA model serves a similar function as Wikipedia’s dispute and filing system to identify deliberate manipulation and misleading information. It produces a high-level of accuracy and community involvement no single central entity can match. Figure 9
summarizes key processes and interactions to mitigate risks on the platform and related incentive designs.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 21
4.5 Dispute Mechanism
We encourage and induce high quality work and behaviour with the transparent and open-source nature of bounties, data usage and the fair incentivisation of all stakeholders to maintain a clean database. However, it is inevitable that some agents will try to game the token model for their personal benefit.
Figure 10: Schematic overview of dispute mechanism
DIA Whitepaper – Page 22
To create a non-zero sum game, we make use of staking and crowd-wisdom mechanisms for the
alignment of interest of all stakeholders in dispute and malicious behaviour situations. Details of
these processes are highlighted in Figure 10 and Figure 11.
Attack Vector Incentive for manipulation attempt
Stakeholders affected Mitigation strategy
Bounty not paid-in Free work Data Analyst Bounty in smart-
contract
Bounty pay-out rejected Free data Requestor, Data Analyst,
Delegates
Reward for validation
of correct decision
Low-quality work submitted
Bounty Requestor, Data Analyst,
Tokenholders
Dispute mechanism,
Crowd-wisdom
Manipulated data
commit/source
Malicious commit
without incentivizes
delegates
Requestor, Data Analyst,
Delegates, DApps
Flat reward for small
validation requests
Frontrunning/Malicious
commit
dApps, Tokenholders T+14 dispute
Delegate approval of
malicious data
Requestor, Data Analyst,
Delegates, DApps
>15 arbitrary delegate
selection process
Delegate Staking
Figure 11: Mitigation mechanisms for malicious behaviour
DIA Whitepaper – Page 23
4.6 New Nash Equilibrium and Pareto Optimality Created By DIA
Figure 12 highlights achieved optimization of agents in DIA’s game theory-based ecosystem. In
line with the proposed DIA framework, agents are better off from the start, as they already have
access to free high quality data (in the alpha phase, data will be provided by the platforms founding
members).
Do not contribute Contribute
Do not
contribute
2 ,2 4,5
Contribute 5, 4 7, 7
Figure 12: Strategic form game under DIA market incentives
In the presented version of a game, a player upon the successful contribution of his work gets 5
utility points from a bounty token payment. Compared to the game illustrated in Figure 2 (one
player contributes data while the other is not) both agents are better off. One of them gets free data
and the other is getting tokens for sharing it (it applies to both strategies – in the upper right cell
as well as in the bottom left).
The last cell, (7,7) represents the best strategy for both agents - both are getting free data and
tokens. This way DIA creates the most desirable outcome known to game theory – when the Nash
equilibrium is at the same time Pareto optimal.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 24
Figure 13: Extensive form game under DIA market incentives
An extensive form of the game shown in Figure 13, takes into consideration that agents are not
acting simultaneously, but their decisions are made upon the decisions of others.
In this case agent two is in a situation when agent one has already chosen. Due to the token
incentive, agent two is better off by cooperating under every circumstance. The choice of the first
agent is irrelevant.
Based on the extensive form version it can be concluded: If the first agent does not cooperate, the
second agent still has a strong incentive to contribute. No cooperation would yield agent two 2
utility points in cell (2,2) instead of 5 in cell (4,5), thus getting 3 utility points less than under
contribution to the DIA network.
The DIA token cap will be reached at some point, depending on the take-up of bounties and market
penetration. This is expected to result in a rising value of DIA tokens. This will not have
detrimental impact on the price of requested data, as DIA tokens are dividable and pricing will be
set by a supply/demand equilibrium.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 25
4.7 GDPR Compliance
In 2016 the European Union has ratified the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) which
came into effect on the 25th of May 2018. The goal of changing the previous Data Protection
Directive 95/46/EC was to shift the paradigms in data protection and give more barging power to
EU citizens which could be used for protecting their identity - especially in the internet. DIA’s
mission is provide free access to quality data, yet at the same time comply with the GDPR
regulations in a way such as:
• Breach Notification: In the event of a breach all the parties affected are going to be notified
within 72 hours of first having become aware of the breach via the DIA website
• Right to Access: Users can request confirmation as to whether personal data concerning them
is being processed, where and for what purpose. Further, DIA shall provide a copy of the
personal data, free of charge, in an electronic format.
• Right to be Forgotten: When the rights are compared to “the public interest in the availability
of the data”, personal data will be deleted upon request.
• Data Portability: Allowance to receive the personal data concerning the subject, which will
be provided in a ‘commonly used and machine-readable format’ and giving the right to
transmit that data to another ‘controller’.
• Privacy by Design: From the very beginning appropriate technical and organisational
measures are implemented to meet the requirements of the regulation and protect the rights of
data subjects. We hold and process only the data necessary for the completion of our duties
(data minimisation), as well as limiting the access to personal data to those needing to act out
the processing.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 26
5 TOKEN ECONOMY
DIA is an ecosystem that uses a utility token model. The DIA token is the unit of work and utility-
payment on the platform and is used for generating data, buying premium live API access to data
and as a reward for checking and validating data (staking) as well as building the DIA platform. It
does not provide legal membership rights.
Tokens can be used for activities such as:
• Compensating data suppliers for data provided
• Verification of data
• Development of features
• DIA dispute mechanism, Staking
• Setting public bounties for data cleansing
• Rewarding the creation of efficient algorithms
• Spotting security bugs
5.1 Token Design
FORM AND QUALIFICATION OF DIA TOKENS
From a Swiss legal point of view, DIA Tokens qualify as utility tokens under the guidelines of the
Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA) for enquiries regarding the regulatory
framework for initial coin offerings (ICOs) dated 16 February 2018. DIA does not guarantee that
the DIA Tokens do also qualify as utility tokens in other jurisdictions. The DIA token does not
constitute any voting, membership nor any other legal rights in relation to the association.
GENERAL TRANSFERABILITY, TEAM VESTING & CLIFF
100% of the DIA Founding member & Ecosystem tokens shall be subject to the following
distribution provisions:
DIA Whitepaper – Page 27
• Tokens shall be allocated on a weekly basis linearly over a period of 12 months (Vesting
Period) starting on the date which is 6 months from the closing of the ICO.
• The allocation of DIA Tokens to Founders, team members and advisors shall be subject to the
respective contractual arrangement between such beneficiary and the company not being
terminated on the relevant allocation date (for whichever reason). No such requirement shall
apply in case of investors receiving DIA Tokens.
From a point of view of DIA e.V., the DIA Tokens are freely transferable.
• The DIA Tokenholders accept that DIA may at all times consider the holders of the DIA
Tokens as legal DIA Tokenholders and that DIA has validly performed its obligations. Any
DIA Tokenholder having sold his DIA Token to a third party waives his rights under the sold
DIA Tokens towards DIA.
• The transfer of the DIA Tokens does not require the consent of DIA Association or any other
Tokenholder. Technically, the assignment and transfer of the DIA Token shall be performed
by way of transfer of the DIA Token on the Ethereum Blockchain.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 28
5.2 ICO Termsheet
Issuer: DIA e.V., Gotthardstrasse 26, 6300 Zug; CHE-447.804.203
Auditors: DMF Treuhand GmbH, Marktstrasse 13, 8853 Lachen
Max. Number of Tokens: 200.000.000
Tokens offered to the Public: 15.000.000
Minimum Purchase: € 100
Purchase Price: 1 DIA = EUR 1
Currencies Accepted: BTC, ETH, CHF, EUR
Issuance Period: [BEGIN DATE] to [END DATE], extension by max 30 calendar
days possible
Term of DIA Token: Open-end
Rights of the Tokenholders: Live-data access, data and algorithmic requests, data validation,
staking for disputes
Use of the Proceeds:
Technical Development 50%
Community 15%
Legal / Tax 25%
Operations 10%
Allocation:
Public Offering / ICO 15.000.000
Tokens for DIA e.V. 100.000.000
Founding Member BlockStateAG 50.000.000
Ecosystem Members 35.000.000
Vesting & Cliff: 7-month vesting, 21-month cliff for Founding & Ecosystem
Members
Communication: Swiss Commercial Gazette and www.DIAdata.org
Listing: No listing guaranteed, later exchange listing possible
DIA Whitepaper – Page 29
Sales Restrictions: Purchasers in Switzerland only
(and in all jurisdictions in which the issuance based on this
Private Memorandum is legal)
Applicable law: Swiss law
Venue: Zug, Switzerland
5.3 DIA Token Distribution
Figure 14: Token Distribution
BlockState AG (www.blockstate.com) receives DIA Tokens as consideration for the development
of the initial data feeds embedded within the platform as well as advisory, management and legal
consultancy and work for the initial set-up of the platform. These included the first 15 decentralized
prices for digital assets and ECB reference data as well as frontend and backend architecture and
security measures. DIA founding members are committed for the long term, therefore they will
take a 6-month cliff with 12 months of subsequent vesting.
Coin Offering | 15 mn
DIA Association | 100mn
Founding member BlockState | 50mn
Pool for ecosystem members | 35mn
DIA Whitepaper – Page 30
5.4 Use of Funds
Figure 15: Usage of funds from token offering
Technical Development | 50%
• Ongoing development of new oracles and data fees within the digital assets and traditional
financial space
• Security Management as well as Hacker One Bounty program
• Quality Management
• Local and global data protection/privacy (GDPR)
• Tokenholder relations tool
• Hosting & IT infrastructure
Communication | 15%
• Community management
• PR
• Social Media
• Lobbying
• dAPP management
• Hackathons
Technical Development 50%
Communication15%
Legal 25%
Operations & Puffer 10%
DIA Whitepaper – Page 31
Legal | 25%
• Annual Audit
• Tax advisory of DIA payments
• Corporate, FINMA, EU regulatory compliance
• Ongoing legal management
• Annual Tokenholder meeting
• GDPR compliance
Operations & Buffer | 10%
• Admin
• Support
• Token Reserve/Buffer
DIA Whitepaper – Page 32
5.5 How to Purchase the DIA Token
THE PURCHASE PERIOD
DIA Tokens may be applied for purchase at any time during the purchase period. The Purchase
Period will begin, and end as follows:
Begin of the Purchase Period: [INSERT START DATE], 08.00 am UTC
End of the Purchase Period: [INSERT END DATE], 08.00 am UTC
DIA remains the right to extend the Purchase Period once by max. 30 calendar days, i.e. until
[INSERT DATE], 08.00 am UTC at the latest. An extension of the Purchase Period by indicating
the new end date is to be communicated no later than by [INSERT DATE] pursuant to the Purchase
Agreement.
The Purchase Period shall not be shortened.
THE PURCHASE PRICE
The purchase price per 1 DIA Token is 1 EUR. The minimum purchase price amounts to EUR
100. DIA Tokens may be paid for in Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Euro (€) and Swiss Francs
(CHF). Payments in state currencies other than Euro or Swiss Francs are converted into Euro on
the date on which they are credited to the Euro account at the conversion rate as applied by the
depositary bank. Payments in Swiss Francs are converted into Euro at the rate as applicable at the
end of the Purchase Period.
Purchases in digital assets (BTC and ETH) are converted into Euro at any exchange rates as
published on the website of CME Group at on the day of remittance.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 33
6 TECHNOLOGY
The DIA platform uses several building blocks to provide
secure, verified and openly accessible financial data.
As illustrated in Figure 16, the essential building blocks are
a bounty system to generate data, decentralized financial
applications that use the provided data, and a dispute
system to ensure data accuracy.
Each of the three stakeholder groups involved in the system
interacts with DIA in different ways.
6.1 Bounty System
The bounty system is used by data consumers (i.e., owners of financial applications that operate
on top of DIA) to post incentivized data scraping tasks for the community. A bounty always
consists of a task description and an amount of DIA tokens that are assigned to the community
member upon successful completion of the task. Tasks typically include a data source the data
consumer wishes to use in DIA, a detailed update frequency, and – depending on the data source
– required steps to pre-process the raw data. Typical pre-processing steps include generating
average values over a given time span, removing outliers, or selecting from alternatives following
specific rule sets.
After the bounty has been completed and submitted, the data source is included in DIA as a staging
source. A stopwatch process waiting period of 14 days is started automatically during which the
community assesses the quality of the data source. Depending on the task description, this quality
evaluation can be conducted on either the source code of the collection software or both the source
code and the actual data source.
Figure 16: DIA Architecture
DIA Whitepaper – Page 34
6.2 Decentralized Financial Applications
Decentralized financial applications are designed, built, and maintained by data consumers. These
applications might use the DIA oracle system, the DIA high-frequency off-chain database, or both.
Applications on DIA may use DIA data freely and do not have to register. However, for access to
application-specific oracles (and for adding a new bounty for a data source) DIA tokens have to be
used as described above.
6.3 Dispute System
The DIA dispute system is used to verify data sources and retain a high quality of the database.
Data Analysts can look for potentially inaccurate data sources included in the DIA system and
open a dispute claim. After the claim has been established, any other Data Analyst can stake DIA
tokens on the decision to exclude or retain the data source. The vote is closed after a predetermined
amount of time passed. When the voting period is over, the staked funds of voters that did not
comply with the majority of the community are distributed to the ones that determined the
correctness of the data source.
The dispute system will be implemented as a smart contract on the Ethereum blockchain. The main
functions of the contract are OpenDispute(), Vote(), and TriggerDecision().
OpenDispute()
This function is used to open a dispute case. The dispute case is instantiated using a unique data
source ID. The data scraper ID is assigned when a data source is accepted in the system for the
first time. Competing scraper implementations of the same data source receive different IDs. To
prevent conflicting vote results, there can only be one dispute case for a given scraper at the same
time. The dispute is then stored in the smart contract and opened for votes.
Vote()
The voting function can be called for each dispute case. The function stakes a specified amount of
DIA tokens into one side of the vote and tracks the current voting progress. For each vote, it checks
DIA Whitepaper – Page 35
if the voting period is not over yet, so that voters' funds are protected should they try to vote after
the case is closed.
TriggerDecision()
After the voting period is over, the smart contract can be triggered by anyone to execute the
decision. All staked funds are proportionally distributed to the "winning" side of the vote. An event
is generated that informs passive observers of the result and any existing oracle smart contract is
removed, should the vote result in removal of the data source. The DIA high-frequency off-chain
database continuously monitors the signals of the voting smart contract and removes data sources
automatically, should it be necessary.
These mechanisms ensure full control of the community over the data sources present in DIA. An
initiator of a dispute case has an active interest in advertising the reasons to believe the data source
is wrong. Communication and discussions about active dispute cases can be conducted on the DIA
community channels.
6.4 DIA Data Organization
The DIA system serves its collected data over two different channels. DIA's Ethereum oracles
serve selected data sources periodically to smart contracts that register at the oracle service. This
hybrid setup is chosen due to the high cost of storage on blockchain systems.
All real-time data collected from scrapers is stored in the DIA high-frequency off-chain database.
Only select data points are then transported further into the DIA oracle system, where decentralized
financial applications can access them. It is important to note that there is no limitation of oracle
frequency in DIA itself (apart from block times in Ethereum). A data consumer who is willing to
pay the gas costs can register an oracle with real-time frequency for a specific data source. By that
we ensure that no smart contract use-cases are excluded from DIA while maintaining a level of
costs that represents exactly the need of oraclized data.
6.5 DIA High-Frequency Off-Chain Database
The off-chain database is the main DIA database. All scrapers are connected to that database so
that they send their raw results directly. After the data is stored, it can be filtered for custom needs
DIA Whitepaper – Page 36
and retrieved using the DIA API. The database is designed to handle high loads for data sources
that produce frequent updates. It is geographically and organizationally distributed so that a single
outage does not impact operations of the DIA system.
The DIA oracles are served directly with data the main DIA database collects. The oracles are run
as smart contracts that can call arbitrary callback functions. These callback functions can be
registered on the blockchain by data consumers with functions in their application smart contracts.
This ensures direct delivery of DIA data points into decentralized financial applications. Oracle
write operations require gas, thus it is not viable to post every single data point update into an
oracle. Depending on the use case, oracles might be updated once a day, every hour or even every
minute. A data consumer can search for existing oracles and use these if there exists an appropriate
one. Should there be need for another the oracle smart contract can be called to create an increase
in the frequency.
Figure 17: The DIA Oracle system (data consumers can register functions in their smart contracts to be called by the
oracle contract)
A data consumer can send a callback function to RegisterCallback() in the oracle smart contract.
The callback function will be called in the requested frequency automatically. However, due to the
gas costs of the oracle service, users of the oracle have to pre-pay funds for gas. The oracle
automatically calls the callback function but pauses this operation if the funds are not sufficient to
sustain operation of the oracle.
Customer
Financial Application
DIA Oracle Contract DIA Backend Periodic Updates
Register Callback
Callback for every application
DIA Whitepaper – Page 37
Figure 18: DIA Oracle system in conjunction with the security created by hashing database state on the blockchain
6.6 DIA API
The DIA high-frequency off-chain database offers a REST API that can be used to retrieve all real-
time data. Data sources can be searched, combined and filtered using the REST API. For example,
a user requesting an average of the gold and the Bitcoin price over the last hour can do so by
combining requests for these two assets with a filter function for that use case. Usage of extended
functions can be restricted to token holders by transferring a certain amount of tokens from their
balance whenever they use the API.
Hash of DB & Oracle data
Oracle data
DIA Database
ETH Blockchain
Smart contract
Smart contract
Smart contract
DIA Whitepaper – Page 38
ETH blockchain
6.7 DIA Database Hashing
Figure 19: Ensuring trustworthiness of the platform
The DIA platform stores the complete dataset off-chain in the DIA database, while storing periodic
incremental hashes on the ETH blockchain. The platform will be continuously secured through a
hash, which will be embedded into the token. This will create a secure link between the
trustworthiness of the platform, the validity of the data and the token itself. This means that
whenever anyone modifies the financial information database, the modification will be tracked
and immediately available for anyone using the code.
6.8 Scraping Network
Data is acquired by decentralized nodes that track numerous sources of data. Once integrated, the
source code provided by data providers is run on the DIA network. The range of data that can be
covered is nearly without limits: from a simple API displaying the USD-EUR exchange rate once
a day to the enormous amount of trade data borne by a stock exchange. Data for assets with low
liquidity, that are traded in few markets, can also be collected.
Fail-safe redundancies can easily be implemented by geographically distributing servers that
collect data. The open source data collection approach allows for multiple implementations of
complex data acquisition methods leading to a competitive selection of the most accurate ones.
Data cleaning is a further important aspect in this regard. By observing data providers from several
Data Source
DIA database Application
Reliable, verifiable data directly from the source
Periodic Hashes of DB
Reliable, verifiable data and auditable history
DIA Whitepaper – Page 39
geographical locations and by correlating them with peers in their respective field, we achieve
meaningful statistical metrics like averages or medians and become resistant against eclipse
attacks or major outages
DIA Whitepaper – Page 40
7 GOVERNANCE
“It is the object of the association to promote new technological developments and applications,
in particular promotion of new open decentralized software architectures, decentralized and open
new technology structures shall be enabled, promoted and maintained.“
DIA e.V. / Swiss commercial register entry, translated from German
DIA is a non-profit association under Swiss jurisdiction and controlled by Swiss law. This means
that DIA is subject to strict Swiss controls over monetary flows. DIA has three Founding Board
Members, Martin Hobler, Paul Claudius and Michael Weber.
Promotion of new technological developments and applications, in particular, promotion of new
open decentralized software architectures, decentralized and open new technology structures shall
be enabled, promoted and maintained, with the focus, but not exclusively, on promoting the
development of the so-called DIA (Decentralized Information Asset) platform and related
technology as well as the promotion and support of applications based on the DIA platform and
the DIA ecosystem.
The membership in the association is not correlated to DIA token holdings. Individual applications
are evaluated by the Association board on a case-by-case basis.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 41
8 THE FOUNDING ASSOCIATION MEMBERS
Association Board
Michael Weber
Association Chairman
Paul Claudius
Association Board
Martin Hobler
Association board
Founding Members
Patrick Storchenegger
Ethereum Foundation Legal Lead
Samuel Brack
Cryptography Veteran
Carl-Christian Bruns
Marketing and PR Enthusiast
Dr. Martin Schröder
Angel Investor, Mentor
Ludwig Schrittenloher
Structuring Associate at Credit Suisse Julian Trautwein
Head of Communications DACH &
Central Eastern Europe, Airbnb Inc.
Association
Christopher Kraft
Executive Director at Perella
Weinberg Partners
Zoé Fabian
Investor and entrepreneur
Bernhard Robbel
Senior Associate, Financial
Restructuring Group at Houlihan
Lokey
Dominik Swierkot
Community Manager
Michal Adamski
NGO specialist
Petros Charalambous
Blockchain enthusiast
DIA Whitepaper – Page 42
DIA Association was founded in May 2018 only. It is a new association without any business
history. It has, therefore, not had the chance to generate any income so far. Therefore, no financial
statements on DIA Association are available yet, neither annual nor semi-annual reports.
As DIA Association is structured as a Swiss association, legal entity defined as a first part of the
Swiss civil code therefore it is not subject to any capital protection rules. It does not have to satisfy
any minimal capital requirements; the members of the association are not subject to any obligation
to make financial contributions to the association.
8.1 The Role of BlockState AG
BlockState AG is a limited liability company governed by Swiss law having its registered office
at Baarerstr. 10, 6302 Zug, Switzerland. It was incorporated on 23 April 2018. BlockState AG is
a company active in the development of new technologies, software development and production.
It is the first data provider to DIA Association and uses the data provided in an investable strategy
financial product. It is the intention of DIA Association to also collect data from other providers
and not to depend on BlockState AG. As consideration for the development of the initial data feeds
embedded within the platform run by DIA Association as well as advisory, management, legal
consultancy and work for the initial set-up of the Platform, it has received 50.000.000 DIA Tokens.
BlockState AG is not a member of DIA Association. However, the following members of DIA
Association are also related to BlockState AG:
• Martin Hobler, member of the management of BlockState AG.
• Paul Henry Claudius, Chairman of the management of BlockState AG.
• Michael Magnus Weber, member of the management of BlockState A
DIA Whitepaper – Page 43
9 ROADMAP AND MILESTONES
2017 Idea validation
• Funding and founding team identification
• MVP: Inclusion of top 15 crypto as well as ECB data -Definition of token mechanics
Legal set-up in Switzerland, FINMA submission
H2 2018
-MVP and product/market fit
• Beta Version launch-Launch of ecosystem, -Community
• MVPcoinhub.diadata.org
• No token issuance until FINMA no-action letter
H1 2019
• Cooperation with more external data providers, initial bounties and data sourcing
• Security & Market Manipulation testing- FINMA ruling
Q2 2019
• Security testing• Community management• Individual, verified Oracles as
a service
H2 2019 / Token Sale and
• Token Sale• 100 dApps connected to DIA
service• DIA developer conference
DIA Whitepaper – Page 44
10 BUSINESS BENEFITS BENEFITS FOR ALL STAKEHOLDERS
• The digital asset ecosystem and the financial markets will be more transparent and market decisions will be based on more reliable data
• Developers, analysts, corporations, and governments can build new value-added financial products and services on top of validated data
• Validated data which is open to everyone enables the democratisation of financial industry, allowing more people to work with digital- and financial market data
• Lowered costs of validated data to all industry players
BENEFITS TO DATA PROVIDERS
• New source of revenue through offering data assets in exchange for tokens • Validation of the provided data by a third party • Reputational gains
BENEFITS TO DATA VALIDATORS
• New sources of income through performing data cleansing, transformation, and normalization across multiple sets of data in return for tokens
BENEFITS TO FINANCIAL SERVICES PROVIDERS
• Access to normalised digital assets and other data • Ability to integrate DIA data into existing products in order to provide clients with better
services • Ability to provide improved products based on validated data • Access to reliable data and ability to provide high-quality services for smaller stakeholders.
BENEFITS TO FINANCIAL NEWS OUTLETS
• Robust, verified and financial trading and pricing feeds • Reduced costs of data collection through shared ecosystem
DIA Whitepaper – Page 45
11 COMMUNICATION
In addition to active engagement of the developer community through the issuing and funding of tickets, DIA addresses many more stakeholders that will be targeted in additional communication efforts. DIAs communication activity will centre around 5 core pillars:
DIA CHANNELS
Like most decentralised projects, DIA has several channels dedicated to engaging and updating the community, giving support and answering queries. DIA's general community is active on Telegram and a dedicated Slack channel will be available for more technical exchange between the stakeholders.
DIA OUTREACH
The story of a foundation for the democratisation of data is best told using the data itself. That is why besides regular communications activity like announcing partnerships or feature development, DIA will leverage its data to create free studies and reports and amplify it through content seeding activities and media partnerships with key outlets.
PARTNERSHIPS
DIA strives to engage in partnerships with selected entities that share the vision of a democratic and accessible market for digital financial asset data. Integrating with incumbent players and other start-ups with reach to relevant audiences and complementary technology will be key in creating a functioning, healthy ecosystem around DIAs platform and data. Partners will include media outlets, research organisations, private players, software companies, other non-profit or open source associations and more.
EDUCATION
While DIA provides a technological platform and an active community that provides access to validated data, we believe that educating people to retrieve, analyse and use it is equally as important. That is why we will nurture a range of educational programs to transfer knowledge
DIA Whitepaper – Page 46
among the community to learn about financial data and markets as well as the technology to retrieve it, analyse it and leverage it.
EVENTS
Despite the decentralised nature of DIA, offline engagement of our stakeholders will be an important part of fostering the community. Bringing together all stakeholders for active participation and exchange in formats like meetups, hackathons and conferences will reinforce the existing ties of DIA’s decentral network and drive integration of the wider ecosystem.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 47
12 TEAM
As an experienced team of investment bankers and financial experts, DIA are addressing the inefficiencies and points of friction inherent in the collection, analysis and use of financial data. And digital asset market data currently in place today. With decades of experience in international financial markets, the DIA team is in a unique position to leverage its knowledge and network to create the most authoritative network on financial and digital asset data worldwide.
12.1 Association Board
Michael Weber – Association Chairman
Michael is a true cryptocurrency veteran and serial entrepreneur who founded Bonsum & Goodcoin in 2014 - a blockchain powered loyalty solution and the first ever qualitative "Good" digital currency, which was successfully sold in 2016. Having spent time at Bloomberg, BNP Paribas, Lehman Brothers, Nomura, a Swiss InsureTech and German multinational corporation Bertelsmann Michaels expertise as a former investment banker, data analyst and derivative trader grants him a deep understanding of the German financial legal framework and digitalisation. Michael is an active board member of NGO Hostwriter.org and Co-Founder of bitEasy.
Michael earned a Master of Science and Diplôme de Grande École from ESCP Europe and a first diploma in Economics & Physics from the University of Cologne.
Paul Claudius – Association Board
Paul is a serial entrepreneur and crypto investor. He has more than 10+ years experiences in various strategic matters and international growth initiatives scaling businesses across Europe. Prior to founding DIA he was Director Europe of the nu3 group based in Berlin, transforming the multi-million e-commerce business into a vertically integrated brand. Paul started his professional career as part of BNP Paribas Corporate Development in New York City and AXA Private Equity in Frankfurt am Main.
Paul is the Founder of bitEasy and has advised & invested in multiple start-ups in health tech, IOT and e-commerce.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 48
Martin Hobler – Association Board
Martin is a successful Internet entrepreneur and brings years of expertise in marketing, sales and strategy. Martin previously worked as a sports manager in Formula One and ATP Tennis, working with Lacoste, Warsteiner and other international brands. As an internet pioneer, Martin has also helped build the Berlin mobile navigation company Gate 5, which was later successfully sold to Nokia.
12.2 Founding Association Members
Patrick Storchenegger – Ethereum Foundation Legal Lead
Zug based attorney at law and notary public. Part of Ethereum Foundation with many years of experience in international tax law, corporate law, commercial law, and capital market law. He is a member of the self-regulatory organisation for anti-money-laundering purposes and advises several international concerns including those engaged in trading, re-insurance, transportation and blockchain technology.
Samuel Brack – Cryptography Veteran
Samuel is a cryptocurrency and cybersecurity expert researching on privacy, digital currencies and distributed systems. He has been the technical lead in the Goodcoin project, creating a fully anonymous bonus point system. Samuel teaches students on matters of Digital Currencies, Security and Privacy in Decentralized Systems as well as mobile payments and network measurements and is a published writer in industry publications. He is a speaker on several international conferences. Samuel holds a Master of Science in Computer Science of the Humboldt University Berlin and is currently pursuing his PhD. Samuel is an active member of the Berlin hacker community and the IEEE Computer Society in Los Alamitos, California.
Carl-Christian Bruns – Marketing and PR Enthusiast
Carl is an operations and marketing expert. He has more than 10 years of operational experience founding, supporting and developing ventures in the real-estate, publishing, fintech and e-commerce space. He is also a community and event veteran, having run the first Startup Camp
DIA Whitepaper – Page 49
Berlin, one of Berlin's central startup community events. Most recently, Carl ran the PR and content marketing agency ABCD agency. At BlockState, Carl is responsible for communications and marketing strategy and execution.
Dr. Martin Schröder – Director Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation; Angel Investor;
Mentor
Martin is a Director in the Derivate Products Group of SMBC Capital Markets Ltd. He has a broad experience across various fixed income assets (Bonds, Repo, Loans, CPs, PPs,) with specialisation in derivative solutions (Rates, FX and Credit). Martin has experience servicing clients across a wide spectrum ranging from supranational entities, financial institutions to private equity firms. During his career Martin negotiated numerous derivative master agreements, collateral and clearing agreements and handled novation, close-out, default and termination events on derivative contracts. Martin started his career at Nomura in August 2010, then joined Royal Bank of Scotland in November 2012 and recently changed to SMBC in September 2017. He has a Ph.D. in Information Engineering (Big Data, Machine Learning, Statistics) from Aston University and he obtained a qualification as Certified Corporate Treasurer from the German VDT (Verband Deutscher Treasurer) and the Frankfurt School of Management.
Julian Trautwein – Head of Communications DACH & Central Eastern Europe, Airbnb Inc.
Julian Trautwein leads communications for the world largest online marketplace and hospitality service Airbnb, valued at $31BN, across Europe with 10+ years’ experience as Communications Director and a track record with the world’s leading superbrands. He is an early cryptocurrency investor and advisor in the German tech and start-up scene with a strong network to key influencers in media, politics and culture. Prior to joining Airbnb, he consulted clients like Mercedes-Benz, Absolut Vodka, Vans, Coca-Cola before founding his own consultancy, content-production and publishing firm. He started his career working in editorial and publishing at Gruner & Jahr Publishing House in New York City and in various agencies focusing on performance marketing and brand strategy.
DIA Whitepaper – Page 50
Ludwig Schrittenloher – Structuring Associate at Credit Suisse
With an extensive track-record and profound knowledge of debt capital markets, Ludwig structured, legally as well as operationally, a variety of debt instruments form standard issuances to government and corporate bonds as well as more complex structured debt instruments.
Christopher Kraft – Executive Director at Perella Weinberg Partners
Christopher Kraft is Executive Director in Perella Weinberg Partners’ Advisory business. He has more than 9 years of investment banking experience assisting companies on a wide range of strategic matters. Prior to joining Perella Weinberg Partners in September of 2009, Christopher Kraft was at Nomura from 2008 to 2009, where he served as an Analyst in the European Financial Institutions Group. He began his career as an Analyst at Lehman Brothers. At Nomura and Lehman Brothers, he actively worked with clients in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, advising amongst others the City of Hamburg and the Federal State of Schleswig-Holstein regarding the €3B recapitalization and €10B Second Loss Guarantee of HSH Nordbank. Christopher Kraft earned a Master of Science and Diplôme de Grande École from ESCP Europe.
Zoé Fabian – Investor and entrepreneur
Zoé Fabian is a tech and media investor and entrepreneur. She co-founded Key Partners Capital in 2015, a growth equity investment firm focused on pre-IPO tech investments.
Prior to that, Zoé Fabian was a Senior Investment Manager at Europe’s largest publishing firm, Axel Springer. She helped lead Axel Springer Digital’s growth-by-acquisition-initiative in the late stage tech space, working closely with the executive board and sourcing and executing several major acquisitions, each in the triple-digit-million-euro range. She was also CFO and COO of an Axel Springer deep-tech portfolio company in France, managing a €25 mio. series B financing round. In 2009, Zoé Fabian started her career at Blackstone, where she spent several years in Paris and London as well as in New York City, advising corporates and financial sponsors on mergers
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& acquisitions, financial restructurings, IPOs and strategic alternatives. Zoé Fabian earned a Diplôme de Grande École from ESCP Europe with a focus on finance and strategy.
Bernhard Robbel – Senior Associate, Financial Restructuring Group at Houlihan Lokey
Bernhard Robbel is a member Houlihan Lokey’s Financial Restructuring Group and currently based in the firm’s Frankfurt office. His transaction experience includes a wide range of debtor and creditor restructuring advisory mandates, such as Pfleiderer, A.T.U, Winoa, and Alpine Energie. Additionally, he advised on several mandates in the financial institutions space, including the resolution of HETA. Before joining Houlihan Lokey, Bernhard Robbel was part of Nomura Securities’ Leveraged Finance and German M&A teams in London and Frankfurt, respectively.
He holds bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Business Administration and a master’s degree in Finance from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.
Michal Adamski – NGO specialist, Financial Analyst at Blockstate
Michal Adamski is a long-time member of SCI peace organisation and coordinator of many peace and sustainability projects. Holder of a master and bachelor degree in Law and Economics – joint degree in cooperation of the University of Economics Poznan and Adam Mickiewicz Law faculty.
Petros Charalambous – Blockchain enthusiast
Peter has been politically active since his teenage years, winning the European Union Committee of Regions LeaDeR Award in 2012. Peter has been enthusiastic about the Blockchain and its potential since 2012 and has the firm belief that the Blockchain can solve many socio-economic problems of the world.
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13 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AG Aktiengesellschaft
AML Anti-Money Laundering
API Application Programming Interface
Art. Article
B2B business to business
BKS Token Founding member BlockState
BNP Banque Nationale Paris
BTC Bitcoin
CHF Swiss Franc
CIS Collective Investment Scheme
CISA Swiss Collective Investment Schemes Act
CME Chicago Mercantile Exchange & Chicago Board of Trade
CO Swiss Code of Obligations
COT Token Coin Offering Tokens
CP Commercial Paper
CTF Crypto Traded Finance
CTT Crypto Traded Finance
CV Curriculum Vitae
DAO Decentralized Autonomous Organisation
DIA Decentralized Information Asset
DIA Token DIA Association
ECB European Central Bank
ECO Token Pool for ecosystem members
EM Emerging Markets
ERC Ethereum Request for Comments
ETH Ethereum
FiFo First-in-first out
LIBOR London Interbank Offered Rate
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14 REFERENCES:
[1] D. Acemoglu and J. A. Robinson, Why nations fail: The origins of power, prosperity, and poverty, Brodway business , 2013.
[2] C. Mollenkamp and W. Mark, “Study casts doubt on key rat,” Wall Street Journal, no. 29, 2008.
[3] D. Kahneman and T. Amos, Choices, values, and frames., Handbook of the Fundamentals of Financial Decision Making: Part I, 2013.
[4] T. Kahneman. and D. Amos, Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases., Science 185, 1974.
[5] H. Kerrien, “https://www.marketdata.guru/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Global-Top-Financial-Information-Providers-Who-Why-Future-Trends-2018-05-14.pdf,” Data Compliance LLC. [Online]. [Accessed 18 09 2018].
[6] “Twilight Of The Terminal: The Disruption Of Bloomberg L.P.,” CB Insights, [Online]. Available: https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/bloomberg-terminal-disruption/. [Accessed 21 09 2018].
[7] K. Sedgwick, “Bitcoin.com,” [Online]. Available: https://news.bitcoin.com/honest-coinmarketcap-claims-to-provide-accurate-cryptocurrency-data/. [Accessed 18 09 20].
[8] Autonomus Research, “Autonomus Next,” [Online]. Available: https://next.autonomous.com/cryptofundlist/. [Accessed 18 09 19].
[9] G. Hileman and R. Michel, “2017 Global Blockchain Benchmarking Study,” 2017. [10] Wall Street Prep, “Wall Street prep,” [Online]. Available:
https://www.wallstreetprep.com/knowledge/bloomberg-vs-capital-iq-vs-factset-vs-thomson-reuters-eikon/. [Accessed 15 09 2018].
[11] Dow Jones & Co, “Market Watch,” [Online]. Available: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/lack-of-trust-will-limit-cryptocurrency-adoption-says-bis-2018-06-1. [Accessed 19].
[12] T. Redman, “Harvard Business review,” [Online]. Available: https://hbr.org/2016/09/bad-data-costs-the-u-s-3-trillion-per-year.
[13] O. Blanchard, “The crisis: basic mechanisms and appropriate policies,” International Monetary Fund, 2009.
[14] J. Murdoch and S. Todd, “The voluntary provision of a pure public good: The case of reduced CFC emissions and the Montreal Protocol.,” Journal of Public Economics, 1997.
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15 LIST OF FIGURES: Figure 1: Key players in the financial data market 2010- 2017, Source: Market Dataguru, 2018 Figure 2: Classical two-player reassurance game Figure 3: Advantages of DIA platform versus other provider segments Figure 4: Positioning of the DIA platform Figure 5: Centralized vs decentralised financial data provision Figure 6: Schematic overview of the DIA ecosystem Figure 7: Stakeholder comparison within DIA Figure 8: Data flow and dispute mechanism in DIA Figure 9: Risks and mitigation processes Figure 10: Schematic overview of dispute mechanism Figure 11: Mitigation mechanisms for malicious behaviour Figure 12: Strategic form game under DIA market incentives Figure 13: Extensive form game under DIA market incentives Figure 14: Token Distribution Figure 15: Usage of funds from token offering Figure 16: DIA Architecture Figure 17: The DIA Oracle system Figure 18: DIA Oracle system in conjunction with the security created by hashing database state on the blockchain Figure 19: Ensuring trustworthiness of the platform
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16 DISCLAIMER & KEY RISK FACTORS GENERAL RISK
The DIA Tokens are long-term entrepreneurial risk participations. The Tokenholder shall be aware that the Purchase Price is used for entrepreneurial purposes of DIA Association and represents liable capital. Despite commercial diligence, it may occur that the development of the investments made with the Purchase Price is negative and that the business cannot be continued. Therefore, the purchase of the Tokens is related to substantial risks and may lead to a total loss of the invested capital. The Purchaser must bear this in mind at any time.
DIA Association does not warrant or guarantee a specific life time of the services offered by DIA Association and, therefore, not the profitability of the investment and the usefulness of the services for the Investor. The Purchaser does not become a member of DIA e.V.; there is also no option or conversion right embedded into the DIA Token.
DIA Association is free to use the Purchase Price in pursuit of his or her own entrepreneurial objectives The DIA Tokens are not collateralized.
START-UP RISK
Investments in start-ups including DIA Association involve a high degree of risk, including a possible loss of the entire Purchase Price. Participation in token sales including the DIA Token sale may involve an even higher degree of risk. Financial and operating risks confronting start-ups are significant: DIA Association is not immune to these. The start-up market in which DIA Association competes is highly competitive and the percentage of companies that survive and prosper is small. In addition, hereto, DIA Association is in direct competition with existing and yet to be developed companies.
Start-ups often experience unexpected problems in the areas of product development, marketing, financing, and general management, among others, which frequently cannot be solved. In addition, start-ups may require substantial amounts of financing, which may not be available through institutional private placements, the public markets or otherwise. DIA Association may be forced
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to cease operations or take actions that result in its dissolution (such as (a) a voluntary termination of operations of DIA Association, (b) a general assignment for the benefit of DIA Association’s creditors or (c) any other liquidation, dissolution or winding up of DIA Association, whether voluntary or involuntary). It is possible that, due to any number of reasons, including, but not limited to, an unfavourable fluctuation in the value of cryptographic and state currencies, the inability of DIA Association to procure the necessary information to be fed into the DIA Token and/or put these DIA Tokens in operation, the failure of commercial relationships, or intellectual property ownership challenges, DIA Association may no longer be viable to operate and DIA Association may dissolve or take actions that result in a dissolution event.
DIA Association has been founded on 28 May 2018. Therefore, no annual accounts or semi-annual accounts have been prepared yet, which could give an indication on the financial condition of DIA Association.
RISK OF LOSING ACCESS TO TOKENS DUE TO LOSS OF PRIVATE KEY(S),
CUSTODIAL OR PURCHASER ERROR
A private key, or a combination of private keys, is necessary to control and dispose of DIA Tokens stored in your digital wallet or vault. Accordingly, loss of requisite private key(s) associated with your digital wallet or vault storing DIA Tokens will result in a loss of such DIA Tokens. Moreover, any third party that gains access to such private key(s), including by gaining access to login credentials of a hosted wallet service you use, may be able to misappropriate your DIA Tokens. Any errors or malfunctions caused by or otherwise related to the digital wallet or vault you choose to receive and store DIA Tokens, including your own failure to properly maintain or use such digital wallet or vault, may also result in the loss of your DIA Tokens. Additionally, your failure to follow precisely the procedures set forth for buying and receiving DIA Tokens, including, for instance, if you provide the wrong address for the Purchaser Address, or provides an address that is not ERC-20 / ERC 223 compatible, may result in the loss of your DIA Tokens.
RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH THE ETHEREUM PROTOCOL
Because DIA Tokens and the Platform are based on the Ethereum protocol, any malfunction, breakdown or abandonment of the Ethereum protocol may have a materially adverse effect on the
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Platform and / or the DIA Tokens. Moreover, advances in cryptography, or technical advances such as the development of quantum computing, could present risks to the DIA Tokens and the Platform, including the utility of the Tokens for obtaining Services, by rendering ineffective the cryptographic consensus mechanism that underpins the Ethereum protocol.
RISK OF MINING ATTACKS
As with other decentralized cryptographic tokens based on the Ethereum protocol, the DIA Tokens are susceptible to attacks by miners in the course of validating DIA Token transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, including, but not limited to, double-spend attacks, majority mining power attacks, and selfish mining attacks. Any successful attacks present a risk to the Platform and the DIA Tokens, including, but not limited to, accurate execution and recording of transactions involving DIA Tokens.
RISK OF HACKING OR SECURITY WEAKNESSES
Hackers or other malicious groups or organizations may attempt to interfere with the Platform or the DIA Tokens in a variety of ways, including, but not limited to, malware attacks, denial of service attacks, consensus-based attacks, Sybil attacks, smurfing and spoofing. Furthermore, because the Platform is based on opensource software, there is a risk that a third party or a member of DIA Association’s team may intentionally or unintentionally introduce weaknesses into the core infrastructure of the Platform, which could negatively affect the Platform and the DIA Tokens, including the utility of the DIA Tokens for obtaining Services. Hackers or other malicious groups of organizations may also attempt to get access to private key(s) or other access credentials in the Wallet or any other wallet, vault, or other storage mechanism used to receive and hold DIA Tokens. As a result, the DIA Tokens may be lost forever.
RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH UNCERTAIN REGULATIONS AND ENFORCEMENT
ACTIONS
The regulatory status of the DIA Tokens and distributed ledger technology is unclear or unsettled in many jurisdictions. It is difficult to predict how or whether regulatory agencies may apply existing regulation with respect to such technology and its applications, including the Platform and
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the DIA Tokens. It is likewise difficult to predict how or whether legislatures or regulatory agencies may implement changes to law and regulation affecting distributed ledger technology and its applications, including the Platform and the DIA Tokens. Regulatory actions could negatively impact the Platform and the DIA Tokens in various ways, including, for purposes of illustration only, through a determination that the purchase, sale and delivery of the DIA Tokens constitutes unlawful activity or that the DIA Tokens are a regulated instrument that requires registration or licensing of those instruments or some or all of the parties involved in the purchase, sale and delivery thereof. DIA Association may cease to offer its services to people in specific jurisdictions in the event that regulatory actions, or changes to law or regulation make it illegal to operate in such jurisdiction, or commercially undesirable to obtain the necessary regulatory approval(s) to operate in such jurisdiction.
RISKS ARISING FROM TAXATION
The tax characterization of Tokens is partially uncertain. You must seek your own tax advice in connection with purchasing and holding DIA Tokens, which may result in adverse tax consequences to you, including withholding taxes, income taxes and tax reporting requirements.
RISK OF COMPETING PLATFORMS
It is possible that alternative Platforms could be established that utilize the same open source code and protocol underlying the Platform and attempt to facilitate services that are materially similar to the Services. The Platform may compete with these alternatives, which could negatively impact the Platform and Tokens, including the utility of the Tokens for obtaining Services.
RISK OF INSUFFICIENT INTEREST IN THE PLATFORM OR DISTRIBUTED
APPLICATIONS
It is possible that the Platform will not be used by a large number of individuals, companies and other entities or that there will be limited public interest in the creation and development of distributed Platforms (such as the Platform) more generally. Such a lack of use or interest could negatively impact the development of the Platform and therefore the potential utility of the Tokens, including the utility of the DIA Tokens for obtaining Services.
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RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE OF THE
PLATFORM
The Platform is still under development and may undergo significant changes over time. Although DIA Association intends for the DIA Tokens and Platform to function as described in the White Paper and intends to take commercially reasonable steps toward those ends, DIA Association may have to make changes to the specifications of the DIA Tokens or Platform for any number of legitimate reasons. Moreover, DIA Association has no control over how other participants will use the Platform, what products or services will be offered through the Platform by third parties, or how third-party products and services will utilize the DIA Tokens (if at all). This could create the risk that the DIA Tokens or the Platform, as further developed and maintained, may not meet your expectations at the time of purchase. Furthermore, despite DIA Association’s good faith efforts to develop and participate in the Platform, it is still possible that the Platform will experience malfunctions or otherwise fail to be adequately developed or maintained, which may negatively impact the Platform and DIA Tokens, and the potential utility of the DIA Tokens, including the utility of the DIA Tokens for obtaining Services.
RISK OF AN UNFAVOURABLE FLUCTUATION OF ETH, DIA, BTC OR OTHER
COIN VALUE
If the value of ETH, DIA, BTC or other coins fluctuates unfavourably during or after the DIA Token sale, DIA Association’s team may not be able to fund development or may not be able to develop or maintain the Platform in the manner that it intended. In addition to the usual market forces, there are several potential events which could exacerbate the risk of unfavourable fluctuation in the value of ETH, DIA, BTC or other coins, including another DAO-like attack on the Ethereum network, or significant security incidents or market irregularities at one or more of the major digital asset exchanges.
RISK OF DISSOLUTION OF DIA ASSOCIATION OR PLATFORM
It is possible that, due to any number of reasons, including, but not limited to, an unfavourable fluctuation in the value of ETH, BTC or other digital and fiat currencies, decrease in the Tokens’ utility (including their utility for obtaining Services), the failure of commercial relationships, or
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intellectual property ownership challenges, the Platform may no longer be viable to operate or DIA Association may dissolve.
RISKS ARISING FROM LACK OF GOVERNANCE RIGHTS
Because DIA Tokens confer no governance rights of any kind with respect to the Platform or the Company, all decisions involving DIA Association’s products or Services within the Platform or the Issue itself will be made by DIA Association at its sole discretion, including, but not limited to, decisions to discontinue its products or Services in the Platform, to create and sell more DIA Tokens for use in the Platform, or to liquidate DIA Association Company. These decisions could adversely affect the Platform and the utility of any DIA Tokens you own, including their utility for obtaining Services.
REGULATORY RISKS
DIA Association, and by extension the Platform, is subject to a variety of laws and regulations, including those with respect to privacy and data protection, consumer protection, data security, and others. These laws and regulations, and the interpretation or application of these laws and regulations, could change. In addition, new laws or regulations affecting the Platform could be enacted, which could impact the utility of the DIA Tokens in the Platform. Additionally, the Platform participants are subject to industry specific laws and regulations or licensing requirements. If any of these parties fail to comply with any of these licensing requirements or other applicable laws or regulations, or if such laws and regulations or licensing requirements become more stringent or are otherwise expanded, it could adversely impact the Platform and the Tokens, including the Tokens’ utility for obtaining Services.
Also, changes in laws or regulations governing DIA Association's operations may adversely affect its business. Any change in DIA Association’s tax status, or in taxation legislation elsewhere, could affect the value of its financial holdings, its business or DIA Association's ability to achieve its business objective. Prospective Purchasers are urged to consult their tax advisers with respect to their particular tax situations and the tax effects of the purchase of Tokens from DIA Association.
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OPERATIONAL RISKS
The Company is a young company and the growth of the team and its capabilities may take longer than expected to result in the intended usefulness of the Tokens. The Tokens are just one product in a highly competitive market, and broad adoption by other users and developments by technology partners may take longer than expected. The usefulness of the Tokens depends on the extent of widespread adoption of the offered technology by the marketplace.
RISK OF LACK OF ADOPTION
The success of the Platform, Services, and DIA Tokens is dependent in large part to the adoption of the Platform, Services, and underlying technology by users. It is possible that users do not adopt or use the Platform. Such lack of use or interest could negatively impact the development of the Platform and therefore the potential utility of the Tokens, including the utility of the Tokens for obtaining Services.
TECHNOLOGY RISKS
The DIA Tokens are intended to represent a new capability on emerging technology that is not fully proven in use. As the technology matures, new capabilities may dramatically alter the usefulness of the DIA Tokens or the ability to use or sell them. The functionality of the DIA Tokens is complex, will require enhancements and product support over time, and full functionality may take longer than expected. The full functionality of the DIA Tokens is not yet complete and no assurance can be provided of such completion.
UNANTICIPATED RISKS
Cryptographic tokens such as the DIA Tokens are a new and untested technology. In addition to the risks included in this document, there are other risks associated with your purchase, possession, and use of the Tokens, including unanticipated risks. Such risks may further materialize as unanticipated variations or combinations of the risks discussed in this document.