 David, are you there? Yeah, I'm getting it going in the background. It takes about 20 seconds to get the live stream going. OK, you are live. It's perfect. So welcome, everybody. I'll kickstart the meeting. And welcome to this new meeting. It's a special one on a different time slot compared to what we are used to do. And my pleasure to welcome you all. It's going to be about people as in the RPC. I'll go through the reading of the Linux Foundation antitrust policy first for starting officially the meeting. Linux Foundation meetings involve participation by industry competitors. And it is the intention of the Linux Foundation to conduct all of its activities in accordance with applicable antitrust and traditional laws. It is therefore extremely important that these dates meeting agendas and be aware of and not participate in any activities that are prohibited under ethical US state federal offering antitrust and competition laws. Examples of types of actions that prohibits the Linux Foundation meetings and in connection with the Linux Foundation activities are described in the Linux Foundation antitrust policy. If you have questions about these matters, please contact your company council. Or if you're a member of the Linux Foundation, feel free to contact Andrea of the Grove of the third of Gassner at the Grove LLP, which provides legal counsel to the Linux Foundation. Hyperledger is committed to creating a safe and welcoming community for more information. Please visit our Hyperledger code of conducts. So welcome everybody. Those who are 22 hour periodical meetings, I've introduced myself, I'm Andrea Fresenini, I'm the chairperson of the Hyperledger trade finance special interest group. I'm a seasoned let's say, so trade finance specialist manager. And I'll convert it to digital world. I've been chairing this group for about a year by now. And usually during my activities, it was January Danini who's joined the meeting today and was chairing slides. Leave a little space for him to introduce himself, what he does for the SIG and what we are doing right now through this meetings. But, Janine, please. Thank you, Andrea. Just very quickly, a couple of words on myself. My name is Janini. I support the Hyperledger trade finance SIG as a project lead for trade finance consortium and governance project. And actually, today's meeting perfectly fits the intent of the project. In fact, we are going to talk about the DLPC, which represents a great technical and operational framework. And SQACC notes shows a great use case in the finance industry in terms of flexibility and broad acceptance into the market. I will let the words to the speaker which should start with Wittem Snap, who will short introduce himself and diving into the DLPC. Witt, the floor is yours. You're on mute. Witt. There we go. There we go. I'm Wittem Snap, chairman of GTV Insights, an advisory firm. I benefit from over 40 years of transaction banking experience. I won't say how much over, but there's a sort of a bar. Half of that time as a practitioner of transaction banking with the Bank of Boston holding various responsibilities for operations, strategy and management both in the US and in Europe. And the other half conducting market research in transaction banking products and services for most of the leading transaction bankers around the world. It's been my great and good fortune to be part of and an observer and an incredible transformation which has taken place in our unique ecosystem over the course of my business life. Just as an addendum, I've been a member of BAF for over 25 years and an initial member of the DLPC working group. And Dred, do you want me to just go right ahead and then let John introduce himself as he starts his? Yeah, I think, John. So, let's go on to the next slide then. Are you seeing? Hello? Yeah. Are you seeing the, is that a slide number? Six? Are you seeing? That's right. Yeah, okay. So John, do you want to quickly introduce yourself and then moving to our expert from FQX? Yeah, so thank you very much. And I'm John Taylor, currently a professor of international finance and trade law at the Center for Commercial Law Studies of Queen Mary University of London. But my background is not so much academic. It's been very practical. Almost 20 years with the international financial institutions, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank Group, and General Council of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, all of which you know have supported trade and trade finance in myriad of ways. But the rest of my professional life has been in either private law practice with major law firms or in-house as General Council in financial institutions, including among others, Bong Paribas Capital Markets and in Besco, the large fund management group. So like Witt, I'm a member of BAFTA and I had the great pleasure to be on the working group that put the DLPC together and I was primarily providing some legal counsel in this effort. So Witt, please. Yeah, then over to me, I'm Frank Wendt from FQX. I'm basically the CEO and Chairman. My background is broadly in finance. I started as treasurer in corporate treasury and Intel Corp in California and UK, but also went then on into audit at KPMG and consulting for many years and then basically acted as CFO, CEO at an NGO and at an FinTech called C2 of all. I have more than 26 years of experience, so I keep it short, please, if you need more information that we know. Hand over to Stefan, please. Yes, thanks, Frank. Sorry Witt, I also tried to keep it short. My name is Stefan. I'm co-founder and Chief Product Officer of FQX. Otherwise an attorney at law and North Republic in Switzerland, worked six years in the insurance industry and then I moved back to academia for a PhD on blockchain and securities law. So how can you digitally transfer rights by using DLT tokens? I finished this in 2019 and worked four years with a major FinTech law firm on tokenization projects from first European blockchain-based equity to real estate to gold, also with one of the major digital asset banks. And now besides FQX, I'm teaching on three universities on blockchain and law. I'm happy to be here and elaborate on the Electronic Promise Center notes. So, Philippe, over to you. You're also mentioned on the slides. Thank you and good evening or good morning or afternoon to everybody. I'm Philippe Van Allo. I'm another of the four co-founders of FQX and serving as General Counsel to FQX in my earlier career. I have served as an equity partner to the global law firm of Latham and Watkins advising governments, banks, corporations and others on multi-billion dollar financings in the debt space. And since my retirement, I have focused on being an entrepreneur in the finance space. With that, I hand over back to the team from the U.S. Thank you. Thank you, Philippe. Let's start from the OTC. And I think, Whitman, you should start. All right. I have the floor to you. But thank you. This just quickly, that just quickly gave John and my addresses contact information. Let's go right on and get right into this BAFT DLPC, a new financial asset and standard for global trade. Where did this come from and why BAFT? Well, as some of you may know, BAFT is a U.S-based globally focused association for international financial services industry, historically comprised of banks from around the world. But today, more and more representing the full ecosystem of providers to trade finance and payments. Now, the problem which we saw coming and wanted to address was the digital transformation of trade. Over the past decade, digitalization of banking trade certainly has become a major activity, a major focus. But for trade, for looking back for centuries, international trade and finance has been paper-based, people intensive and cumbersome. Now, while complex, the basic issue is really very simple. The crucial element at the base of all trade transactions embedded in all instruments covering those transactions is a commitment to make a payment, simple payment to other parties in the transaction. Now, during the past century, the legal basis for those payments was covered by a law usually statutory or regulatory based on paper-based transactions with wet signatures. However, as this digital transformation of banking became more widespread, a new legal framework was needed to cover the digital payments in the newly digitized trade world. Now, to accommodate the new digitalization of our trade ecosystem, a standardized and common way to represent the digital payment commitment from any trade transaction was needed right across the board. Further, to begin, we'll keep on the last page. Further, in addition to being legally binding and enforceable, interoperability of a digital payment across DLT platforms was required to accommodate the growing number of platforms, such as Marco Polo, WeTrade, Contour, amongst others, and finally, negotiability was required for enterprise adoption. So, to meet these challenges, BAFT in 2016 established a digital ledger payment commitment working group, the DLPC working group to address these challenges, which just to summarize were digital payment commitment which was standardized, legally binding and enforceable, interoperable and negotiable for any trade finance solution, whether sitting on a DLP platform or not. Now, the result of the three works, three years plus of effort by the working group which was composed of both trade bankers, technical specialists and lawyers is the BAFT DLPC payment commitment which is an open source form to meet requirements outlined above. And the importance of open source cannot be stressed enough. This issue is for the industry as a whole to be built on by banks, FinTechs and any other industry participants. Now, BAFT first published the DLPC technical and business best practices in April of 2019 for trial use. I think we wanna go back a couple of slides there. On this document allowed us to solicit industry feedback and commentary. Much of the industry feedback was based on the live transactions in the spring and summer of 2020. So with revisions based on actual commercial use in late August of 2020, the BAFT DLPC working group published initial release version 1.1 of both the business best practices and the technical best practices. These documents can be found on the BAFT website and to be clear, we consider these best practice documents to be living documents and we'll continue to update them as we receive industry feedback. Now by way of recap, and we're on the right side here, at the heart of this effort, it can be seen that the technical, from the technical best practices which illustrates the DLPC's flexible application the DLPC is recorded on a distributed ledger in 13 simple data fields that first of all identify the payment commitment and the parties, link the commitment to an identified transaction, show the status of the transaction as it moves from beginning contingent to effective and finally to discharge. And these 13 fields also provide the governing rules governing the DLPC. So I think in summary, the DLPC conforms to and follows the flow of any trade transaction from inception to final payment. So with that, let me now turn over to my, this over to my colleague, John Taylor to speak to the crucial and critical elements of the legal framework which provides for the success of this effort. So John, over to you. Thank you very much, Whit, that's very kind and also thanks to the Hyperledger Trade Finance Special Interest Group for the opportunity to address you on this issue of the distributed ledger payment commitment. Perhaps we could go back to the previous slide please because this summarizes graphically just how simple the DLPC is. It's simply a payment commitment. It does not purport to describe fully the trade transaction to which the payment commitment relates, but it tracks the trade transaction. It's a payment commitment. It's in digital form, obviously because we were trying to represent this payment commitment not in a paper-based form and it's for use in any trade finance transaction. In fact, it can be adapted to any transaction but principally we designed it for use in trade finance as you will see from the papers that are on the website of BAFTA. It is, as Whit emphasized, open source. So it's available for all of you. Any of you can go and look at the, not only the legal and business practice that we have set forth, but more particularly the technical best practices and the 13 data points, particularly that are expressed in great detail and it's interoperable on and across any DLT platform. But more importantly, it is within a legal framework ensuring that the commitment is legally enforceable and negotiable. And we could turn to the next slide. You might ask, well, wait a minute, how did you get the legal framework? Because that's what people have been troubling about for so long and worrying over. Well, the first thing we did is we BAFTA in conjunction with R3 and the US law firm Sherman and Sterling prepared a paper to indicate that although code is not law, nevertheless, the way in which a legal framework could be built around a payment commitment. And that paper therefore guided us in principle, but it required the hard work of the committee over the years that Whit mentioned to hammer out the precise framework of the DLPC. We say it's legally enforceable and it's negotiable, underline that, because we designed the DLPC as a note or a promissory note, hence the reason paperless promissory notes on DLPC, the topic of this webinar. The note's the unconditional promise to pay. I promise to pay you X. And it's recommended that the parties choose Delaware law because we found to our pleasure that Delaware law expressly confers on holders, on obligors and holders of notes, promissory notes, the same rights and defences as if the note were in written form. The fact that it's in digital form makes no difference. It is still a binding, legally binding obligation and benefits from the elements of the Uniform Commercial Code in Delaware that give it a negotiable aspect. It is a negotiable instrument. Moreover, we've provided that, excuse me, dispute settlement could be before Delaware courts and the reason we did that was because we realized that Delaware courts would be very likely to implement Delaware statute law. But I should emphasize that the DLPC is a very flexible instrument. You can choose other laws or other fora to govern the DLPC. For example, if you wanted to have your instrument, the note, governed by Delaware law, but in the event of any conflict, conflicts could be resolved before an arbitral forum, an arbitral tribunal, that's fine. You can do it, but of course, we would always advise irrespective of whether using Delaware law or the laws of other countries or other fora, it's wise to get your own legal counsel on doing this. However, we had very experienced U.S. counsel assisting us in the working group. Those were not only U.S. lawyers familiar very much with uniform commercial code in the United States, but also with specific lawyers in Delaware. So if you need the references to the materials that we've mentioned, here they are. They're short, all of the materials that are quoted there are short documents describing as best we can, the business best practices, and the technical best practices. And please, I'll stop there. If there are any questions, we'd be very happy. Wirt and I would be very happy to entertain them. Thank you. Thank you, John, and thank you for this presentation. Yeah. Perfect. Then I think it's up next now, and I think it's thanks a lot, John, and Wirt, because I think it's amazing what you have done over the last couple of years and providing a sound basis. And actually, to be honest, we have the beneficiaries of your work. So thank you for that, and also to Daft. And also, so thank you to Hyperledger, Played Finance, and Special Interest Group for making this happen today. It's really an excellent event and professionally managed and we appreciate that. FQX, yeah, we are basically a company based in Switzerland. We have been investing in one single endeavor which basically makes, you know, to make the E-note or the electronic promise so we know what happened. We invested in technology perspective, but we also invested heavily on the legal perspective and it's very analogous to Baft and the DLPC. We do provide technology infrastructure to any party that is involved in trade finance and even beyond, be it a financial institution bank or non-bank, be it a trade intermediary, a buyer, or a seller. So next slide, please. But let me step back. We do have a very interesting development in promising models. If you go back, actually 800 AD, the Chinese actually came up with the promissory note and merchants actually started to get a bit tired of carrying copper coins. And they basically invented something what they called, I hope I pronounced it right, page yen, and page yen means flying money. They called this flying money and actually the promissory note became afterwards the bank note. But in the trade context, it was actually a releasing merchant to carry heavy copper coins and obviously that also had its risks along the way, along the silk road, et cetera. Now, so they moved from copper coins to paper. Now, we have since then done a lot of work and we have a global standardized legal framework, the Geneva Convention, we have the Bill of Exchange Act of England and Wales and we also have developed this instrument in a unique way. And we always talk about unconditional promise to pay but actually it has a minimum of three functions. One is the payment function, it's a payment instrument. So you can pay your bills, it's a credit instrument and it's a collateral instrument. But that's quite unique. There are not many financial instruments, actually there are none that can actually combine all these three functions. Importantly, the global community in each country have actually very strong enforcement regulation which are special, which are separate even to collecting bills or invoices in court, which makes this entire proposition very, very interesting. Last but not least, it was mentioned before by John and Witt, it's a negotiable instrument. So it is something I can actually give to somebody else and get a purchase price. That makes it a very liquid instrument. But, and now it comes to the big part and that's why we're talking here. We are going now, we came from copper coins, we went to paper. Until today, we go from paper to digital. And that's why we're here. We don't want paper, we don't want physical signatures, we don't want portraits, we don't want operational risks. We want an e-note. An e-note in this sense that we have developed is actually something that builds on the old but create something new. When I hand over to Stefan Meyer, my colleague to further explain. Thanks a lot, Frank mentioned it. We at FQX were providing an infrastructure to issue and transfer those promissory note electronically. And in the core, we are based on those 13 DLPC data objects Witt and John described before. So we also highly appreciate that as Frank mentioned the work BEFT has done in this regard. So it's a very solid basis, also very well-defined basis. And we're happy also to base our system on this DLPC model. However, we of course added one or the other aspect in regard to DLPC. So what we, for example, do on our infrastructure is we integrated so-called qualified electronic signatures which are regulated digital signatures in the European Union which have the same legal weight as a handwritten signature. So every instrument is signed by the authorized persons with their qualified signatures. We also add ISIN numbers to our e-notes. And this, as you know, this facilitates then also the registering of the instruments. So if you could please go one slide back again. Thanks a lot. So we add those ISIN numbers. And now at the moment, we are also working on additional functionalities in regard to the promissory note. So be it, for example, site notes which do not have a due date but which are due on site. We're also intending to have avalization. So we can now really use this DLPC standard as a core and on the top of it add whatever is needed also by the market. And then in regard to DLT, our e-notes are based on the so-called Swiss trust chain, as you have seen on Frank's slide before. So this is a fully banking-grade DLT provided by Swisscom in Switzerland in the banking zone and the Swiss Post also in a banking zone. So every e-note created on our system is securely and redundantly stored on this infrastructure. However, we at FQX, we're also blockchain agnostic in a way that we will allow users also to choose other ELT infrastructure set spaces. So you can then, if you want to do so, also opt for registering your instrument, for example, on the Ethereum blockchain. So this is then really up to the users whether they want to go in a closed banking-grade environment or in a more public open permissionless environment. And then one additional aspect, as I mentioned by John before, is that we in our case, we combine the e-notes with an arbitration clause in order to facilitate the enforcement. So if we have this arbitration clause, this allows then based on the applicable New York Convention to enforce the instrument in currently 165 countries. So the last country joining the convention was the Kingdom of Tonga, so somewhere north of New Zealand. So you can even enforce then the related arbitral award in the Kingdom of Tonga. And what you see here on this slide is a very important aspect from our FKX perspective. So we are not just a kind of a digital notary service creating unique data objects. So we have a very narrow focus on the instrument side. We purely focus on the promissory notes at the moment, but the broad focus in regard to the modules and services which are helpful in regard to using those e-notes. So at the center you see here, we have our API structure and then you can use our e-notes either via our platform or we have other platforms. For example, one of the leading money market platforms integrating our e-notes into their system. And then now with a large European MNC, we're also now creating a system where you can then use SAP in order to issue the e-notes and those are then signed and created on our infrastructure. And then on the top right, I mentioned this qualified electronic signatures. Here we also have attached a video identification procedure in order to ensure that every party is identified on the infrastructure and every identified signer receives then also the qualified electronic signature. And then you see here, in addition, we have functionality for IC number reporting. Also on the settlement side, we will have an almost real-time delivery versus payment. So we do them not only cover the title side but also the payment side. And then last but not least, on the bottom right, this e-note enforcement. So here in case of the issuer not paying the face value, we also provide on the system the first step then to initiate the enforcement procedure. So as you can see, we really starting beginning with the issuance and designing of the signature over the whole life cycle of the e-notes until if needed the enforcement of the instrument. So I now try to elaborate a bit on the conception and the technical level. And I would again hand over to you, Frank, to explain what are the use cases which are now in practice already working. And maybe as one last statement, so to mention from my perspective, so who is using our system at the moment? So is it just on a POC level, one might ask, but we on our infrastructure at the moment already have larger MNCs. We also have banks already on the infrastructure ranging from pure digital asset banks to large traditional, the large traditional one. And we already have real financing transactions happening on the system. So as you hear people at the market is already trusting into those electronic forms of those promise to note. Now, if I may interrupt for a moment because I saw two questions regarding technology that may be helpful to answer right away. One is, I believe, coming kind of from a blockchain perspective. It is asking about a consensus protocol. Obviously, we have a different procedure here and the other related to an explanation of the ISEN where it comes from, what it is, maybe two quick responses to these questions as I just saw on the chat. Okay, thanks, Philippa. I tried to be very short so that we have still enough time for the other parts regarding the first questions on the Swiss trust chain. It's a consortium solution by our partner Swisscom in the banking zone in Swiss Post via Post Finance as Swiss Bank. And it's a private permissioned DLT system with the advantages of being all registered on tier four service centers. So fulfilling the outsourcing requirements, for example, which are relevant for banks and financial institutions. But as you also see here on this slide, our idea is also that if you want to do so, you can use public permissionless systems. So you will really have to the choice which is the applicable basis. So this is in regard to DLT, otherwise in regard to ISEN, we have a contingent in Switzerland from the Swiss Stock Exchange. So we can add ISENs there. We also have a structure where we can add ISEN numbers for German issuers. And now at the moment, we're expanding the list of countries where we can support and provide those ISEN numbers. The advantage of the number is for an institutional investor that's something you know and you can work with and this facilitates then the recording and registering of the instrument in your system. Thank you. Thanks, Philip, for mentioning these questions and I hand over to you, Frank. Thank you. So if you go to the next slide, thank you. So we learned basically what is an e-node. It's actually building on the old but creating something new on one, a technology infrastructure which is combining various aspects. Now what are the use cases? And these are six use cases and I probably will go into depth in the first three but they're obviously more than you actually can list probably. The first one is a very simple one is a money market case. You as a borrower issue an e-node to investor, the investor is basically obtaining a security, a debt security, the credit instrument, pay out the financing amount and you pay back a due date plus an agile. Very simple, it's normally a commercial paper. We don't need SPVs, neither brokers. We can actually do it on that infrastructure. Then we have the cases, sales fines and purchase fines which are actually mirror images and any company is a supplier. So you as a supplier obtaining an e-node from a buyer for your random services and products. You have this payment security, in this case a payment instrument. You sell it off to the investor at a purchase price. You extinguish your receivables and you transfer the entire credit risk. It is an abstract instrument which means the rest of the risk and that relates to the trade transaction is actually not present anymore. No supplier risk is simply the credit risk towards the buyer who is the issuer who actually obtains a later payment date plus a potential trade discount. And then obviously you can be the buyer. So you basically are moving from the sales side to the other side of the value chain and you go to the purchasing side and you can actually do the same and issue an e-node extent payment terms to the supplier. And again, it's the same story supplier pace 30 to the investor obtains a purchase price for the random services extinguishes receivables. So you can see you have now hearing mechanisms on the receivable side and the payable side plus working capital finance to money markets in one. The second thing is we call it sales and purchase financing because we do more than receivables and payable financing. You can do PO financing, you can do LC embedded financing, this or this possible. The four, five and six use cases are basically an e-node attached to a pledge could be receivables, could be any other as it is possible, trade loan where buyer supply obtains financing within an e-node or the other case collateral which means the e-node is not used for financing purposes but as a collateral instrument in a trade transaction. Now I would like again to give back to Stefan because enough talking and I want to, we would like to give you a demonstration how this platform works. Sorry, I want to remind the attendants, please mute yourself because we might hear sounds in the background. So please mute yourself. Please, Stefan. Stefan, you should be able to share your screen now. Thanks a lot, Andrea. So instead of just talking about the DLPC and our implementation of DLPC, it's interesting to very quickly show you how we did this in practice. So what you see here in the background is our demo environment. However, it's nonetheless fully connected to our private permission to DLT system. We also integrated the qualified electronic signatures. So I will now just very quickly log in with a test account and then here you see the different sections. We have our e-node offers, the concluded e-nodes. We can define an ecosystem and we have all the necessary admin functionality in regard to subsidiaries, in regard to defining users, signing roles, limits, et cetera. So everything which is required to control who should be able to do what on the infrastructure. And then I will now just briefly show you how such an e-node looks like in practice. And here, Frank, before briefly described the two major use cases we see at the moment in practice on the one hand, we have a corporate finance or trade loans. So here it's very simple. You have an issuer issuing the e-node, transferring it to an investor directly receiving liquidity and then the investor holds a negotiable instrument so you can either just wait until due date and get paid or you can transfer the instruments to any other party at any time. And here in supply chain finance, as Frank mentioned, the buyer is paying its supplier by using an e-node fulfilling the underlying trade contract and then the supplier can instantly further transfer the instrument to an investor and then gets paid. And I will now just briefly show you this trade loan or corporate finance scenario as it's the quickest one. So we now make an offer to our investor and here we then define the conditions so in the trade loan scenario, what we do first is we define the financing amount. We define then the currency, so let's for example take euros, the payment date when do we want to receive the liquidity and then here we start defining the e-node terms. And that's our colleagues from BAFT explained before they are 13 data points which are essential and relevant and here we define parts of them. So first of all, the due date of the e-node so when do we want to pay the amount back? This leads to a majority. And here of course our investor in this scenario also wants to earn something. So we define a yield and this calculates then in this scenario the e-node face value which is as you see here a bit higher than the financing amount, the purchase price. And then here depending on the jurisdiction we can already here attach an ISIN number to the e-node and then this ISIN number would then be added here. And as you see here, it's already the visualization of the promissory nodes, a very simple generic instrument. You have the issuer, the beneficiary, the due date, the face value and also here the applicable law clause which in this case is Delaware law. And then what we also add here is an issuance agreement. So between issuer and investor referring to all the agreed terms in regard to purchase price, et cetera. And on our platform you can then choose also to either use our template contract with the usual clauses or if you want to do so you could also make your own contract applicable if there are certain legal clauses which you think they are essential to having them included. And then here as you see also the arbitration agreement which ensures then that you have one process of enforcing the promissory node and then if you receive this arbitral award it's a super simple and elegant way to enforce your claim globally. And now the last step, if you agree we confirm it on our system and then we sign this transaction and now we're doing this not just a click and accept but by using our qualified electronic signature. So I click now here on sign now and what we do is we create the hash of the transaction send it to our trust service provider and I as a user receive here on my mobile phone I hold it into the camera I don't know whether you are able to see it but I receive here a message I insert my pin code and by doing this I trigger the private key related to the qualified electronic signature and now as soon as the page reloads we see here now I as Stefan Mayer I signed the transaction I can also verify the signing certificate and this serves then also as an authentication of the users and by this we ensure that really the legally authorized people sign the transactions and enotes so that every enote on the infrastructurist and also legally valid. And then now the last step I will now quickly go over to the screen of the investor so you should now be able to see this screen and I quickly refresh the page and here you see now one minute ago we received a new offer from our test corporation we see here now the enote it's still not in a issued valid version it's still in the preview mode and now as soon as also the other party agrees to the transaction term we also sign it by using the qualified electronic signature and now as soon as both parties agreed the status of the instrument changes we add the qualified electronic signatures to the instrument and now we have a legally valid legally authoritative digital version of the promissory note you see here now the preview label disappeared we also added visually the signature and here on the right side you also have a QR code allowing you to verify if you for example have a PDF or a print of the instrument whether what you have before you or in your hands still shows the current legal status so in specific whether the holder of the instrument has not transferred after generating the PDF the instrument to another party so this is then also kind of a verification model and now as an investor you have two options so we just either wait until due date and then we get paid or as it's a negotiable instrument we can transfer the instrument to any other party at any time so this is in essence the very short way of issuing an e-note we also have as mentioned the constellation of supply chain finance this is more or less the same with the exception that at the beginning you define first the underlying trade relationship you're referring to you can also do this even via SAP and then the instrument is generated transferred from the buyer to the supplier and then instantly from the supplier to an investor and you can even do this with predefined terms in the system and even in addition in a mass signing procedure so that you just have to confirm it once so this is in a very short once that you have seen also the e-note how it looks like in practice and I'm now happy to hand over again to I think you Andrea have the presentation and I think we are now very open to answer questions from you guys from the audience. Thank you so much Stefan that was really, really brilliant presentation from both of you from all of you actually so thank you very much If you might then I would open the question as time I wouldn't stop first if you don't mind I mean we are thinking in terms of European blockchain services infrastructure how do you see both DRPC and e-notes as a new standard, new is maybe micro loans loans in general how do you see the future with to this subject other than to you who would love to do course maybe on the European side of the speakers I mean for my side I mean if you talk about the European, the E-BIS initiative I think we, we are as we mentioned already very close to European standards the GDPR complied of the three we are using quantified electronic signatures which is all a European regulation in the same the initiative that is done at E-BIS is also hyper ledger fabric based so in that perspective we also on that same basis in a sense we do not have a direct relationship with E-BIS however yet something we can consider we have looked at the legal environment globally at roughly two and a half, three years ago when we started and we identified Delaware law and E-BIS was running in parallel and we basically now come together a merge in our thinking at least and we are open to also look at various regional, geographically regional ambitions and the European Union has and the European economic area has an ambition to provide a platform for various services public services but also B2B services we are happy to plug in there but we need to have a legal basis and the legal basis at the moment is either a letter through the Singapore ETA or in the Abu Dhabi global market which also has an ETA or the U.E.T.A, Delaware U.E.T.A or New York U.E.T.A legislation so that's where we started but we need to have a legal basis first and then we go the next step when the European Union is ready to actually have a legal framework that works. I'd like to elaborate a bit on the legal framework because I saw a couple of questions regarding enforcement and dispute resolution in the chat and in this regard, I'd like to emphasize that the FQX legal framework while based and similarly as the U.P.C. on Delaware law and we have been advised by a global law firm and it's Delaware offices on this we do not resort in terms of dispute resolution to the state courts of Delaware or any other place rather we have implemented and devised I believe quite smart legal solution for dispute resolution based on the gold standard of international arbitration that is Swiss arbitration law and we have devised a mechanism that allows them to have all parties agree and enter into arbitration agreements which are then enforceable without an additional review of the merits by state courts once an arbitral award is rendered in 165 countries all over the world according to an international treatise all of these countries have signed that is the New York convention and that I think is a ubiquitous global enforcement mechanism that we do have devised here with regard to dispute resolution if there is any regarding the digitized promissory note under Delaware law. And perhaps Andrea if you'd permit me John to also say this is one of the key questions that I think among the audience Dr. Hans Huber had asked would he have to seek a legal proceeding in Wilmington and the answer is no if indeed an arbitration arrangement is agreed by the parties as Philip has mentioned then the arbitration will be taking place wherever the seat of the arbitration should take place if it's in Switzerland it's in Switzerland or if it's in France it could be in France it could be anywhere in the world. The important thing is though that the arbitrator then would need to have evidence of what is Delaware law if the parties have chosen Delaware law. The other question that Hans Huber had raised was would the DLPC or in this case the e-notes that FQX has described so well to us would they be adapted to other legislations when those legislations allow for digital promissory notes and the answer is yes indeed we envisaged that and in our paper from the DLPC we specifically said as the laws of other countries come into the 21st century we will be expecting that the parties would then adapt to those laws and as you know so much work is being done in many jurisdictions now including the English jurisdiction I'm based in London but I'm Australian we didn't choose Delaware law because we especially wanted to choose an American law but we were very pleased to do so because it has developed sufficiently and is very clear in statutory terms that it gives the enforceability binding enforceability and negotiability to a note of this nature. And John, if I may add to this and I entirely agree with you in terms of our FQX legal framework we can adopt our legal framework when it comes to the law governing the notes to any other newly enacted act on negotiable instruments in this regard and thus we are not committed in any way to a particular jurisdiction in this regard but we share your view that at this juncture Delaware law is a time-tested law for electronic negotiable instruments and we rely here not only on the advice we have saw and the legal design we have developed but rather also on practice and precedence and that I believe is an important feature for our participants that they can rely on a tested jurisdiction. But there's another angle to the question raised and that is do we have to be concerned about the impact of any other local laws on the application of Delaware law? And in that regard, we are very confident that this is generally not the case and the reason why is this. Again, we have a choice of law of Delaware law a law that will be recognized by the Swiss arbitration panel under Swiss arbitration law. And once the award is rendered the enforcement is no longer subject to an additional review of the merits by the local state laws where you seek enforcement. However, obviously, they have an option to invalidate an arbitrage award if it is unconstitutional but this is really if you will a nuclear option and it is very seldomly raised within the international arbitration practice and that is the beauty of this framework and it adds a level of security and stability to the legal framework which is really comparable to the laws which govern the enforcement of bills of exchange or promissory notes in the old times. And we were our element in trying to replicate the security and the reliability of the old system the paper based system also the court based system for the enforcement of promissory note with our digital solution and the legal framework applying to it. Indeed. And I think there was one other very brief question if I may say that was could there be tokenization of the instrument and the answer is frankly I believe yes but we did not provide for that we were trying to for the DLPC we were trying to keep it simple payment obligation let others if they wish to tokenize it I think the answer is yes. What I can also say it's my understanding although I have not received specific legal advice on this but it's certainly my understanding as a lawyer that we also comply with the Malita provisions Malita provisions of the Uncitral the model law on electronic trade instruments that the rules that the model law that they have provided that what we are talking about would fall within those rules. John just a brief comment I think the DLPC the DLPC is really just a very basic instrument and as FQX is so I think brilliantly demonstrated it is something that can be used by a number of providers of trade or payment services because it is just the base from which to build and it's got the flexibility in it to use whatever law that you really wanna use but it has all the steps along any trade transaction that can be built upon and yes it can be tokenized that's what you want there was a question about payment issues regarding payment and as payment new payment rails get created it will be able to sit on those. So just think about it as a very basic payment. Perfect, thank you Witt. There are a few questions I would love to start from and the first one is from Tatyin Yap from Singapore. I'd like to thank him of course me and here right now based on the day and he's asking how does a reported e-note issuer prevent rogue employees from issuing unauthorized e-notes? So here I can start tackling these questions. So what we first do in regards to the securities that there is a video identification process for every signer. So that's the step one and then every signer receives the qualified electronic signature allowing him then to sign and then as a legal entity admin you are then steering which signers are allowed to sign on behalf of your company. You can define whether a single or a double signature is needed. You can also define limits attach certain roles. So here you have a lot of possibilities to control who is really able to do what and also to prevent fraud in your organization. And I think then in addition to also the two FA procedures I think here we have a high level of controllability and also a high level of security. Great, thank you Stefan. One more question about this. I mean it comes from Jovan Schreven from Belgium and he's asking does the policy to which you potentially transfer a receipt note also need to use the FQX platform? I think it's to use Stefan to answer maybe. Yes, thank you. So at the current system in order to transfer E-notes you need one or the other access to the infrastructure. It does not necessarily need to be via the platform because we are also especially focusing on indirect models where other systems use our infrastructure but it's one or the other access possibilities needed then in order to transfer and receive the instrument. This ensures that first all E-notes have the essential legal elements and the clauses included and secondly also that we ensure that every E-notes is signed by a person which is allowed to do so. Perfect, thank you Stefan. I still don't see this in the FQX making sign. This question from Guillermo Diaz is asking how do you plan to resolve the issue of international phone transfers? Taking into account that banks have not yet resolved how to establish a model that has different laws that are not compatible with each other. That's a tricky question actually because it involves lots of issues and maybe can be answered by any of you. Yes, I'm happy to take on that question although I probably would need a bit of clarification on exactly what it is referring to. What we are talking right now on the FQX model is a model for the issuance transfer purchase and sale of the E-notes. What we at this juncture do not is and what you are currently devising is then also an appropriate settlement structure but when it comes and to the extent it comes to the issuance transfer of the promissory notes this is governed by one legal framework as I already alluded to. In terms of payments we do work with the payment service provider, international payment service provider that is enabling us basically and delivering those payment mechanisms. At the moment we are doing this in the G10 currencies. We hope that we can extend this to also other currencies around the world. Maybe also in emerging market currencies that we can also issue notes in local currency not only in those internationally well-known spaces. And this is a very reputed payment services provider who applies to the stricter standards all applicable compliance and other regulation in it here so from that angle we are coming. It's an integrated, maybe I can add the payment service provider and ask me to basically have one onboarding KYC and AML process so that's for the security also on the payment side, next to the title side. Perfect, thank you. I'll go on with questions. I mean, a few ones, the answer. There's one from Bob Blower. He's asking, to what extent would an insolvency provision or other cold intidates prevent payments? Yes, I'm happy to take on that question. It's a good one and the answer to it refers a bit to kind of an old piece of wisdom that is that an important question in life is compared to what? And compared to promissory notes, whether in paper form or any promissory notes, our system and any E-note system I would submit is subject to exactly the same rules for insolvency as any other. And thus, we are not worse and we are not better in an insolvency scenario with our legal framework than in a paper-based model. And I agree, I would have loved to find a legal solution to reduce the impact of insolvency, but then I would have probably built up a separate startup on that and sold it to the legal branch. And Philip, I'd just like to add that is the conclusion we also reached as we were developing the DLPC, namely, yes, insolvency law could trump if that's what the insolvency law provides. But the question is how would you protect in any event unless you have very special instruments that then would not have the benefit that the note, the promissory note has? I think the same is true with what other question I saw on the so-called protest procedure. Is it the same under local law? I think the answer is yes. In other words, you take the law, if it's Delaware law you want to use, you take it as you find it. And it may not be perfect, but it is currently one of the strongest laws that exist in the world. And it's up to other countries. I mean, Britain, for example, or England, for example, as we all know, is working under statutes that were formulated in 1880s, the 1880s. So it's kind of time for some updating. And when that updating takes place, then you as the industry can really take benefit from that. Yes, and in this regard, if I may add, the legal framework of FQX, when it comes to any dispute regarding the payment of the e-note then is designed as to make sure that the parties resort to the arbitration agreement mechanism. And this is a particularly swift and speedy mechanism. There's an option on the international arbitration rules that are applied according to our legal framework that make it extremely speedy and the rendering of an arbitral award comparable, once again to a state court proceeding in case of protest. So again, we replicate what there is, probably even improve on it. Andrea, are you on mute? No, no, no. It's Eugenia here. I have just one more question on my side. And I think it's more for Stefan. During the demo, you're quickly coming to the possible case of a supply chain scenario in which the e-notes are issued essentially as a collateral to the trade deal, underlying trade deal. So I was thinking if in that case scenario, maybe in the future, are you thinking in terms of possible development of business into adding an IoT tracking solution in order to keep control of the underlying trade deal, which of course should be locked into the notes? Yes, thanks, Socino. That's an excellent point. Sorry, could you please mute yourself? Thank you. Okay, thanks, Socino, for you. It's good to be able to get in. Perfect, they have an appointment. It's yourself. Paolo, but maybe we have to mute him. He's probably not aware that he's listening. Andrea, you're set as the host, so you can mute. Okay, bye. Bye. Paolo, I think you're back now. That's good. So to answer your question, I mean, that's an excellent point to combine it with IoT devices. At the moment, the model is based that once you receive the invoice and also the goods, then you're issuing the e-note as a means of payment for the underlying trade relationship. But the more internet of things devices and the more data sources we have, the more efficient system using e-notes will be. So that's definitely something which will be used in the future. And then we also come into more and more optimization. And then we could also, especially for you, then move also to more public permissionless systems in regard to smart contracts. And here you have a very high degree of possibilities. We have a lot of different possibilities, how you then can optimize it, the supply chain finance structure and how you can do it, make it more efficient. Sure, sure. I actually particularly agree with you. I actually, I was thinking maybe in the future where we will have something like a more tokenized money asset, we could even think on just unlocking a trench of the e-notes on specific events triggered by the smart contracts platforms on issued by, of course, by your platforms. So, yeah, let's see in the future. Thank you anyway for the reply. Thank you. This gives us a nice outlook on what the future is in terms of optimization and also in this respect on how to integrate e-notes with other instruments and other standards. Another question from Tatjín is asking, must the party to the FQX e-notes agree to the terms of FQX? And the answer to that is yes. A party that wishes to use the infrastructure for the issuance or transfer or holding of an e-notes issued there on has to agree to the terms of FQX. Having said this, I'd like to reemphasize was what our CEO Frank Wendt said earlier. FQX is why currently running as a platform is not intending to do so ultimately exclusively as a platform, but rather we intend to offer the infrastructure, the techno legal infrastructure we have developed to institutions who wish to offer such an opportunity to do such trade. So in the end, then customers would have agreed to their terms, but in general, this is requiring the consent to the terms of FQX. Thank you, Philip. There's one more question actually in the chat. If the e-notes is dissolved from Bob Blower, if the e-notes was perpetual and transferable in due course, then it will be the same as an organized settlement currency. So I remark actually not the question. Yeah, maybe I start with Stefan, you can kick it. Obviously, as I mentioned a little bit in this very brief historic review, the bank actually the commercial note became a bank note. And even if you take the British 10 pound note, it says to the order of Bank of England. So meaning that you have actually the right to go to the Bank of England to exchange a 10 pound note for a 10 pound note. But I'm trying to say it's as close to a currency as you can be, but it's not a currency. It's not a legal tender. And maybe that's why I give to Stefan because he's the lawyer, but this is from my business perspective, interpretation. But you can argue if you would have a signed e-note without a due date that a supplier obtains from a buyer an e-note, he takes the e-note and pays his supplier and his supplier pays his supplier. But it's always drawn on the original issuer. So it becomes a kind of a private currency. And if you look at economic theory, there's a lot of discussions about complementary currency, the regimes and so forth. But this is not our intention. No, and moreover, yes, I'd like to step in here. The promissory, it is an equivalent to a promissory note. It's a transferable record and a negotiable instrument under Delaware law based and replicating a promissory note under the Uniform Commercial Code. And both when the underlying model law of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act and its Delaware adoption was decided in the very late 90s of the last century, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York looked at this and it was clear that it was fine with this instrument. It is a promissory note and it is what it was. It's just a digitized instrument. And thus there is no reclassification in order and in particular, the federal Fed itself has looked into this and has agreed that this is an ordinary negotiable instrument and it serves for payment purposes. It can serve also for purposes of raising credit. And thus it is entirely in line with the financial legal structure of the US. Just to mention this as the most important provider of currencies in the world to date. And perhaps I should add, it does not, of course, need to be expressed in US dollars. I mean, it can be a payable, it's a note payable in whatever currency that the parties may wish, euros, yen, yuan, whatever. What's currency, John? Any currency, exactly. And it was never the intention of the DLPC Committee working group that we would be creating a quote, new quote, currency, but rather using existing. Yeah, and it is not a new currency. It is an established, it's an established financial instrument used actually by major financial institutions. The e-note as such is used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There's pretty much very little in terms of big financial institutions in the US bigger than those. And they have been used e-notes in other respects, in particular in terms of security transactions in the real estate sector. So it is an approved and legit instrument. Perfect, perfect. And I just wanted to see actually, having problems with my Zoom, because VPIN, our friend VPIN is saying in private money in the US was a professory, transferable, negotiable instrument with signatures. So this is let's say in addition to our discussion. Thanks for posting VPIN, of course, for being with us and asking these. So I'm seeing another question very ends. Let's see, oh, sorry. Andrea, I think VPIN want to comment because it's raising his hands. Oh, I just said, perfect, VPIN. Great job guys. I mean, I did listen to the last one where Witt and John were there. And this is a new dimension with this stuff about the negotiability. Couple of points. One is, you know, I'm going to be giving a presentation on in a hyperledger on message-based interoperability which of course harkens back to DLPC and to, you know, things like ISO 20 or 22 and other types of things. And of course, there's always the sort of knife edge between a currency and a negotiable instrument with a lot, a bearer instrument with a lot of different qualities like Dr. Philly mentioned, you know, collateral and credit and all those prices of money come into picture. So in a sense, you know, the money aspect comes into this whether you want to or not. And there's a person who asked whether cryptocurrency can be acceptable as a payment. So in our system that I'm going to propose which is based on something like yours, the currency codes will include the new currency codes that are proposed by the ISO 24165, which refers to cryptocurrencies that are part of, you know, payment by currency instead of just the G10 currencies that you were talking about. Anyway, sorry, I don't want to go on but you know, this is very interesting. I run the capital markets special interest group and we collaborate, Andrew and I collaborate on many occasions on these things. And of course, this payment rail is a very important thing and these kinds of instruments are always interesting. So thanks for bringing it to our, you know bringing it again to the attention of all the people on this call. It's great. And perhaps I, please could I add, I see no reason why a promissory note could not be handwritten obliging the person giving the note, making the note in payable in cryptocurrency. I don't see why that would be prohibited. And if that's not prohibited, then it could be done digitally under a DLPC or under the notes that Frank and his team have created the FQX. The problem is when you say something like I'm going to pay you in X, X has to be that everybody accepts and that's why the registration authority and the ISO 24165 becomes important. Not because I can't, I can say I can pay you in cows or whatever, you know. It doesn't, you know, that's a private arrangement. Maybe I cannot, I cannot transfer it to too many people. No, no indeed. You're absolutely right. I like this. There's one last question before maybe we can close the meeting, you know this also comes from our friend Tatine. He's asking, are issuance is an endorsement to be notes on FQX guaranteed to be by authorized parties? Yeah, that is due to the elaborate onboarding mechanisms that we have in particular laid out already by Stefan. We could obviously again further elaborate on that but it is really a matter also of access to the electronic signature and the authority there to to make this sure. And that's also one of the reason why this is in itself a closed system which requires any participant to go through a fairly speedy actually and efficient but nonetheless diligent exercise in onboarding. And indeed I'd like to please add that this is also I think assured under the 13 data points of the technical data points that we developed with DLPC. Protections are built in under those data points. So please feel free to look at the paper on that. And if you have other questions, of course, collectively I'm sure we would be happy to seek to answer them. Yes, we are open to answer further questions and feel free to reach out to any of us with those questions. Perfect. So I think we are done for the day was a very good meeting. I thank you all the speakers for joining us today. It was a great, great meeting. Maybe one of the greatest that I have chaired. So thank you so much. I think the attendance of the meeting folks pretty numerous today was a good one. Hope to see you during the next meetings to start for the next one on 27th of April. Thanks everybody for joining us today and have a great evening.