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Compliance and Regulatory

Blockchain Technology Platforms

Blockchain is a highly transformative technology, with applications across industries and sectors. Operating as a digital, decentralized, and distributed database and backed by cryptography, blockchain ensures secure, tamper-resistant, and real-time transactions, revolutionizing the way we understand and conduct business. The digital record-keeping technology expedites transactions and operations, with potential reach across the globe, increases trust and transparency, and minimizes the involvement of third-party intermediaries.

On a blockchain, new transactions and data are simultaneously broadcast to the network nodes (distributed ledger) and are recorded once validated through intensive computing processes. Since blockchain is shared in identical copies within the network, altering and falsifying data is extremely difficult, if possible, at all, rendering blockchain tamper-resistant. Recording new data uses the previous hash, creating a chain of transparent, secure, validated, and immutable transactions, which is shared in identical copies within the network.

The way blockchain works provide the ground for foundationally novel business models to emerge. While blockchain was initially associated with bitcoin, and, mostly, financial services, the potential of blockchain cannot be so narrowly confined. Indeed, blockchain’s reliable and trustworthy recording and verifying mode attract virtually all industries and sectors, supporting wide-ranging transactions. Due to significant efficiency gains, blockchain models manage to disrupt and accelerate development in the market.

Often discussed alongside blockchain are smart contracts, an equally exciting technology that materializes much of blockchain’s potential. People recognize smart contracts as the application tool that makes the promise of blockchain a reality. Smart contracts are computer codes or programs, operating on blockchain, which contains pre-determined conditions or events, the occurrence of which triggers their automatic execution. Smart contracts are, thus, self-, and automatically, executing computer programs. The third-party agency is removed from the execution equation, offering amazing efficiency, time, and cost gains. That smart contracts operate on the blockchain means they benefit from all promising and efficient blockchain features. This results in secure, trustworthy, immutable, transparent smart contracts, which execute performance obligations in an automatic, fast, and secure way. Smart contracts substantiate much of blockchain’s potential as an extremely useful technology that ensures the application, performance, and enforcement of recorded conditions.

Our team has been a frontrunner in blockchain development and continues leading through its fast-paced and continuing evolution and use. As such, we are well-positioned to appreciate, and assess blockchain development, and offer critical advice to our clients. Despite the perception of blockchain as a future and distant business tool, our experience and an analysis of market trends reveal that blockchain offers business-ready, practical, and tangible solutions with current application prospects. Blockchain potential is already materializing through many projects, even though blockchain is still an emerging technology. We have the first-hand experience of the varied, wide-ranging, and exciting cases using the technology in an effective and disruptive way. Banking, finance, and payments, insurance, health, real estate, document management, supply chain management, energy is only a small sample of sectors hosting blockchain projects.

Our team’s founder is heavily involved in important initiatives in the blockchain and smart contract regulatory sphere, gaining indispensable and exclusive insight to, and guiding, the advancement of blockchain and smart contract regulation and standards.  She is the Cyprus delegate to the ISO TC/307 Blockchain Committee, which develops internationally recognized blockchain standards, actively contributing to the WG-3 on Smart Contracts. ISO seeks to implement standardization in blockchain, to resolve scalability, lack of interoperability, certainty, and technology quality issues. These concerns are embedded in any blockchain project, something that our founder’s ISO experience confirms, and something we apply and consider in offering legal and regulatory solutions to our clients.

Through her involvement in ISO, our firm’s founder has successfully led the inclusion of a Cyprus-based blockchain-enabled project in the ISO-approved catalog of use cases, affording enormous visibility and promotion of the project to the international blockchain community and investors. This phenomenal success corroborates her unmatched expertise and experience in guiding the establishment and growth of blockchain projects.

As part of blockchain’s increasing utilization in business, blockchain platforms emerge at a significant rate. These platforms operate in wide-ranging industries, and ensuring regulatory compliance involves both blockchain-specific, and industry-specific regulatory considerations. Blockchain platforms operate in an evolving regulatory framework since regulators are still processing and assessing the optimal approach to providing a proper blockchain framework. Regulations might apply to blockchain platforms, mostly by reference to existing regulations governing traditional modes of business operations, or by specific regulations as passed in specified jurisdictions. Again, the type of platform determines the scope and kind of regulation.

In Cyprus, blockchain regulation is closely examined by competent authorities and regulators. The government and parliament, as the executive and legislative branch, have issued the National Strategy on DLT (incl. blockchain), proposing comprehensive legislation on blockchains, tokens, and connected activities. The regulatory framework is expected to place the use of blockchain technology on certain and predictable legal bases, furthering, and facilitating its use.

Blockchain platforms call for regulatory compliance in all steps, from setting up the business vehicle hosting the platform, complying with any specific requirements, managing and assisting the platform offering its products/services to the public, observing any sector-specific requirements, and obtaining any necessary licenses.

Our team has the expertise, experience, and in-depth knowledge to handle compliance matters for blockchain platforms. Our expertise is constantly reinforced by our continuous interaction with significant blockchain projects. Our focus lies with fintech projects, which implicate financial services regulations. Crypto- banks, -exchanges, -trading platforms, -wallet providers, decentralized finance providers/platforms are platforms operating in the blockchain financial space and command-specific attention to the complex financial services’ regulatory framework. Drawing on our expertise in financial services, we respond to all regulatory needs of blockchain platforms operating in the fintech landscape. Of course, we stay abreast of blockchain platforms’ development in wide areas and sectors, offering services to blockchain platforms operating in varied commercial areas, from energy platforms to education platforms. Since blockchain platforms may operate in highly regulated areas, our clients rely on our general commercial expertise, and experience in a wide array of sectors to receive specialized and comprehensive solutions that render their platforms fully compliant.

In addition to our industry-specific expertise, we accommodate our clients’ needs in setting up and operating their blockchain platforms by applying our well-informed knowledge in blockchain and blockchain regulation. As explained, our team leader’s experience and a close involvement with blockchain regulation and our team’s continuing engagement with the area place us in the unique position to identify blockchain-specific problems and unique blockchain needs from the outset, and offer holistic solutions to our clients, anticipating and accounting for the pending and incoming developments in the relevant regulatory sphere. This grants our clients significant competitive advantages over other projects.  Our consultation and regulatory solutions are not given in a vacuum; we are mindful of the particular demands and technicalities arising because of the use of blockchain and smart contracts.

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