Digital Asset Holdings
Digital Asset Holdings Technical Briefing
Published January 19, 2021
Supported by Shopify , The Kauffman Foundation and Levvel
Overview
Eric Sarnecki, co-founder of Digital Asset, demos DAML — Digital Asset\'s framework for building networks of systems of record. The pitch: the world already runs on distributed ledgers, but the consensus algorithm is reconciliation — expensive, slow, and the reason payments are slow, margin is expensive, and capital requirements are astronomical. DAML replaces this by putting authorization directly on the data, enabling privacy-preserving data integrity across organizations. Customers are using DAML to rebuild equity settlement (eliminating margining), re-architect repo markets, and tokenize new asset classes (peer-to-peer sports betting, securitized factoring receivables). The demo showcases Digital Asset\'s open-source "market in a box" — a 30-minute-deployable marketplace with investors, custodians, and an exchange running on Project Daimler (Digital Asset\'s devops-free cloud runtime) and integrated with partner Xberry\'s high-performance matching engine. A sample Bitcoin/Tesla trading pair shows DAML\'s ability to create, list, and settle any pair on the fly, with a live view of per-party database state, UUID-based privacy-preserving onboarding, and data-layer authorization that blocks wrong-party API calls at the ledger itself.
0:00 Introduction to Digital Asset and DAML
Eric Sarnecki, co-founder of Digital Asset, introduces DAML — Digital Asset's development framework for building networks of systems of record. DAML lets businesses connect disparate core data systems across privacy boundaries, guaranteeing data integrity and enforcing authorization at the data layer itself.
1:00 Reconciliation as the worst consensus mechanism
Eric's thesis: the world has always run on distributed ledgers — but the consensus algorithm is reconciliation, which is expensive, slow, and error-prone. Reconciliation friction is why payments are slow, margin is expensive, and capital requirements are astronomical.
1:30 What customers are building on DAML
DAML customers build things like equity settlement systems that eliminate margining, repo-market re-architecture, peer-to-peer sports betting without counterparty risk, and financialization of previously illiquid asset classes (e.g. securitized factoring receivables).
2:30 Market-in-a-box starter app
A 30-minute deployable open-source starter app — the "market in a box" — shows what can be built on DAML. Any halfway-decent developer can modify it in a few days to fit their own marketplace use case.
3:30 Distributed marketplace — investors, custodians, exchange
The demo is a live open marketplace on Daimler with investors (Alice, Bob, Charlie), custodians, and an exchange — data segmented per participant with no central operator. Integrated with Xberry for cloud-native high-performance matching.
5:30 Listing Bitcoin/Tesla pair and aggregated order book
The exchange can create any pair on the fly — the demo lists a Bitcoin/Tesla pair (trading ~44 BTC) that no real exchange offers today. The order book aggregates per-participant bids and offers into a single view.
6:30 Wallet with holdings at a custodian
Eric's wallet holds Bitcoin, dollars, and Tesla shares at a custodian. The custodian can service and safe-keep the assets, but only the owner can instruct transfers or allocations — a clean separation DAML enforces at the data layer.
8:00 Project Daimler — devops-free deployment
Daimler is the live cloud runtime for DAML apps: download the DAML SDK, build, drag-and-drop to deploy. The live-data view shows every party's state segmented by UUID, with privacy-preserving onboarding so data is only replicated to authorized parties.
9:30 Data-centric authorization and segregation
DAML takes a data-centric view: authorization lives with the data, not in a layer above it. Asset-deposit contracts expose APIs (merge, split, set-observers) and the owner can see which parties are authorized to view or mutate. Wrong-party calls fail at the data layer.
11:30 External integrations — Xberry, Slack, Symphony, price feeds
Integrations (Xberry matching engine, Slack/Symphony notifications, price feeds) are tightly coupled to the cloud environment. Rather than building middleware, customers deploy integrations with credentials and interact with external APIs through DAML ledger transactions.
Presented by Eric Saraniecki — Digital Asset Holdings · website
Topics: Blockchain & DLT, Capital Markets
