Importance of Fintech to India

On 8 November 2016, the Government of India announced the demonetization of all ₹500 and ₹1000 banknotes, it set off a wave of Fintech growth in India. Fintech is now mainstream and a critical segment for the future of India's economic growth.

Here are 10 reasons why Fintech is very important to India.

1. Economic Growth
The payment segment has been a major enabler of economic growth. Electronic payments systems added $300B to GDP in 70 countries between 2011-2015, which resulted in ~2.6Million Jobs/Yr
Each 1% increase in electronic payment produces ~$104 B in consumption of goods & services

2. Financial Inclusion
Fintech opens up opportunities for the previously unbanked population to access modern financial instruments. For people living in poverty or at the fringes of the economy, Fintech lowers costs of Financial transactions: Lower cost of credit and other banking services.

3. Speed & Quality of Innovation
Fintech drives improvements in traditional financial services – which will replace legacy systems. Eg: Peer-to-peer lending, Robo advisors, Hi-frequency trading

4. Business Sustainability & Scalability
Fintech has made businesses sustainable & Scalable. The entire e-commerce economy was built on e-payment systems and new business models such as Ridesharing: OLA, UBER, Metro Bikes, etc were developed on Fintech e-payment systems – which allows these businesses to scale and grow rapidly

5. Transparency & Audits
All digital transactions are inherently auditable hence bringing greater transparency into the system. Data sharing in real-time across banks & financial institution reduce fraud risks and reduces the cost of regulatory processes.

6. New Value Streams
New fintech technologies are creating new business opportunities. Bitcoin & other cryptocurrencies have spawned whole new businesses.

7. Market Curation & Structural Transformation 
Fintech technologies are transforming other industries. For example, healthcare record management, Real estate, land registration with Blockchain, etc. This is bringing structural reforms to businesses that were on the fringes of the regulated economy into the mainstream economy.

8. Collaborative Culture
New Fintech businesses are built in collaboration with other businesses. For example, Blockchain is based on open collaboration between members who host the shared ledger.

9. The Scale of the Industry
Fintech has grown from being a niche to mainstream. Today Fintech companies are collectively worth more than $500Billion and directly employ millions of men.

10. Borderless Innovation
Technological innovations in Fintech can be quickly adapted across borders, creating new competition and new opportunities for existing players. This rapid innovation is bringing whole new financial hubs and opening new markets.

Bitcoin Hype has ended: What's Next? Answer is Corda!

Bitcoin and Blockchain A number of things have come to pass since 2016.  post (below the line) including Bitcoin forking in order to increase transaction speed. This happened suddenly, after what appears to be a reversal of policy by China whose companies control 80% and all 5 of the largest bitcoin "mining pools."

Chinese companies blocked bitcoin forking for an extended period except Alibaba's ANTpool. Suddenly all five approved the XT and then Classic fork and voila. What happened? We can only speculate, however it appears the Chinese government decided it was better to control Bitcoin than attempt to block it. So yes, Bitcoin is a "distributed" governance model but make no mistake that Bitcoin governance stops in Beijing.

What is Corda?

Corda is a blockchain platform built for business. Corda removes costly friction in business transactions by enabling businesses to transact directly. Using smart contract and blockchain technology, Corda allows existing business networks to reduce transaction and record-keeping costs and to streamline business operations. Corda enables an interoperable, open network that empowers organisations to collaborate and transfer value directly with trust. Corda achieves this with complete privacy in a freely available open source software platform.

Corda can be deployed on Generic x86 Servers

Corda is not a Blockchain

On November 30th, 2016 the R3 foundation publicly released the code for its Corda  decentralized ledger platform along with a bevy of developer tools, repositories, and community features including both a Slack and a Forum. A little under a month out, and it is safe to say that the Corda platform is well underway under the guidance of the well known Mike Hearn who also wrote the technical whitepaper on Corda.

Notably, in this white paper and in the code, the development team has taken a new approach to decentralized ledgers: Corda is not a blockchain. Many aspects of Corda resembles something in blockchain, Corda is not a block chain. Transaction races are deconflicted using pluggable notaries. A single Corda network may contain multiple notaries that provide their guarantees using a variety of different algorithms. Thus Corda is not tied to any particular consensus algorithm.

This is a fascinating addition to the distributed/decentralized ledger race in that one of the most well known consortia in the blockchain space has moved away from using blocks of transactions linked together. This is an intriguing peer-2-peer architecture since the transactions utilize the UTXO input/output model which is very similar to the transaction system used in more traditional blockchains such as Bitcoin but the storage and verification do not get written into blocks.

Likewise, Corda does not contain a general gossip protocol which broadcasts all transactions to the network. The validation function of the contract code only needs the validation chain of each individual transaction that it is working with and transactions that occur on the ledger are not broadcast to a public depository or written into blocks. Likewise, the consensus protocol of each deployment of Corda can change allowing the platform to conform to the needs & specifications of each client. These simplifications allow Corda to sidestep the scalability issues dogging blockchains like Bitcoin while allowing for a system that conforms to the needs of an enterprise rather than forcing a multi-gajillion dollar company to fundamentally change the way they need to handle payments.

Corda architecture is a highly client-sensitive private ledger that allows for nodes tailored to the kinds of transactions that their operators need. The ledger allows for mistakes to be fixed and states to be edited and is stored on a H2 database engine interfaced with the SQL relational database language. However, any changes to states must also conform and be validated by the code. This realist approach to an enterprise distributed ledger as it takes into account the need for both familiar integration, headroom for the inevitable human mistake, and a single truth between parties. As mentioned before, the state system also contains a direct reference to an actual legal document that governs this truth.

Advantages of Corda - Distributed Ledger Technology

Blockchain & CorDapps Use Cases

R3 Corda Application Architecture

Corda is a distributed ledger platform designed to record, manage and automate legal agreements between business partners. Designed by (and for) the world's largest financial institutions, it offers a unique response to the privacy and scalability challenges facing decentralised applications

Corda's development is led by R3, a Fintech company that heads a consortium of over 70 of the world's largest financial institutions in the establishment of an open, enterprise-grade, shared platform to record financial events and execute smart contract logic.

Corda is now supported by a growing open-source community of professional developers, architects and hobbyists.

What makes Corda different?

1. Engineered for business
Corda is the only distributed ledger platform designed by the world's largest financial institutions to manage legal agreements on an automatable and enforceable basis

2. Restricted data sharing
Corda only shares data with those with a need to view or validate it; there is no global broadcasting of data across the network

3. Easy integration
Corda is designed to make integration and interoperability easy: query the ledger with SQL, join to external databases, perform bulk imports, and code contracts in a range of modern, standard languages

4. Pluggable consensus
Corda is the only distributed ledger platform to support multiple consensus providers employing different algorithms on the same network, enabling compliance with local regulations

Closing Thoughts 

Corda provides the opportunity to transform the economics of financial firms by implementing a new shared platform for the recording of financial events and processing of business logic: one where a single global logical ledger is authoritative for all agreements between firms recorded on it. This architecture will define a new shared platform for the industry, upon which incumbents, new entrants and third parties can compete to deliver innovative new products and services.