Where is today’s future?

Distributed Futures is dedicated to exploring new technologies and finance. A large portion of the programme looks as Smart Ledgers, but also wider technologies ranging from quantum computing to machine learning to biological finance. Specifically, Smart Ledgers are multiorganisational databases with a super audit trail (often based on blockchains, used since 2009 in cryptocurrencies) with embedded programming and sensing, thus permitting semi-intelligent, autonomous transactions.

Research

Our research is structured around four themes:

• Society
• Technology
• Economics
• Politics

Directed at four outcomes:

• Expanding frontiers
• Changing systems
• Delivering services
• Building communities

Economic Control of Alternate Currencies Simulator

Objectives

• To develop an economic simulator capable of simulating characteristics of hypothetical alternative currencies (e.g. cryptocurrencies), their users, environment, exchanges, etc.
• To be freely available to use online.
• Supporting design, development, control, and also regulation of alternative currencies.
• With the goal of making them genuinely useful and competitive as currencies and electronic payment systems, in the long term too.

Click here for information.

Related Projects

• MetroGnomo – an open-source experimental timestamping service based on Z/Yen's ChainZy mutual distributed ledger technology. MetroGnomo’s replicated authoritative immutable ledger improves coordination, cooperation, integration and dispute resolution between firms through the provision of impartial timing information and unique universal identifiers. More Information...
• IntereXchainZ: building on the successful InterChainZ project, IntereXchainZ extends mutual distributed ledgers to build a functioning marketplace.
• Distributed Futures Forum - a forum for senior people to meet and network with a group of their peers four times a year and share intelligence on mutual distributed ledgers, cyrptocurrencies, blockchains, FinTech, RegTech, and other interesting topics where disruptive technology meets finance.
• The Impact and Potential of Blockchain on the Securities Transaction Lifecycle - there is considerable interest in the potential use of ‘blockchain’ in the settlement of securities transactions. Proponents argue that the use of cryptographic security tools to create blockchains (sequential, digitally signed and validated records of ownership) can allow almost instantaneous post-trade delivery against payment (DVP), thus radically simplifying post-trade processing and substantially reducing both costs and operational and liquidity risks. The SWIFT Institute has commissioned Professor Michael Mainelli & Professor Alistair Milne, Loughborough University School of Business and Economics, to examine the impact and potential of blockchains and mutual distributed ledgers on the lifecycle of securities transactions. More information...

Historic Projects

• InterChainZ - a new research consortium collaborated between July and October 2015 to look into potential uses for distributed ledgers in a number of financial services.
• Chain of A Lifetime: How Blockchain Technology Might Transform Personal Insurance - a research project carried out between August and December 2014 which explored how blockchain technology might transform personal insurance and in particular interactions among individuals and insurance companies over time.