Ownera Launches API For Digital Securities Ecosystem Developers

Ownera has launched an API that will make building digital securities (AKA Security Tokens) platforms and applications much simpler. Ownera then connects those solutions directly to the heart of the institutional ecosystem to enable distribution to institutional investors.

Security tokens platforms were so far built mostly on Ethereum and targeted crowdfunding and retail investors. The Ownera API is built on top of HyperLedger Fabric, and targets the institutional market.

Asset classes such as equity, debt, real estate, and derivatives make up hundreds of trillions of dollars. However, asset management and ownership is a manual, legal process which is slow, costly, and extremely limited.

Ownera now allows developers to easily build platforms and applications (or convert existing platforms from Ethereum), with a simple and powerful API, which includes much of the functionality required to build such platforms – right out of the box. Ownera accomplishes this without the need to develop off-chain, backend solutions and write complicated smart contracts. 

Ownera’s API contains four primary functions: 

  • Profiles;  
  • Claims; 
  • Document storage;
  • Tokenization of digital securities. 

These four API functions can make the creation of digital securities solutions dramatically simpler than writing code directly inside blockchains and smart codes. 

The first part of the Ownera API deals with profiles of identities:

Creating Ownera users or “owners” and creating Ownera assets.

The second part of the Ownera API deals with “claims:”

Claims are properties of an Ownera profile, which are “given” to the profile by a trusted third party.

Claims are used to provide independent verification to an owner that has certain qualities. For example, a KYC is a claim, a document that verifies that a user is an “Accredited Investor,” is also a claim. Claims are also used for KYA (Know your Asset). KYA is a set of documents that describe the asset and the rights of token holders in the asset,  KYA documents are legally binding and immutable, so token holders know exactly what they own.

The third part of the API deals with documents:

These APIs simply allow the upload of documents to support a specific claim. The documents are kept (for V1) on the blockchain and may be encrypted by the claim provider for privacy.

The fourth part of the API deals with the tokens representing the digital securities:

These APIs support issuing new tokens for an asset, as well as executing transactions in which asset tokens are transferred between owners.

About Ownera

Ownera is an institutional-grade digital securities network, where all nodes are regulated financial entities (such as banks, asset managers and exchanges), who underwrite the assets, verify transactions for regulation-compliance, and then distribute the assets to their institutional clients across the network. Ownera is built on a version of HyperLedger Fabric, which was upgraded from a private blockchain configuration to a public permissionless model. More information can be found here: https://ownera.io