By
Zhivko Todorov
May 26, 2020
4 Min Read
The emergence of blockchain and distributed ledger technologies opened the floodgates for tokenizations of assets. Over the last couple of years, assets across different industries, including financial, real estate and luxury goods have been tokenized to provide fractional ownership, liquidity, and instant settlement among other benefits. Those assets are labeled as security tokens. Before diving deeper into the subject, including use cases and launching a security token product, let’s cover some basics first.
A token usually represents a programmable asset or access rights, managed by a smart contract and an underlying distributed ledger. A security token is defined as a token distributed in exchange for investment and marketed with an expectation of a return/profit. Each token is stored on a blockchain – e.g. Ethereum.
It’s safe to say that the concept of security tokens is way beyond the experimentation stage, with solid business use cases picking up speed across a variety of industries. In fact, billions of dollars worth of assets have been tokenized in the last couple of years alone.
Here are just some of the industries that digital securities are already disrupting:
Say that you have а deep industry knowledge and are ready to launch your tokenized assets which could disrupt that industry. What exactly is needed to create and distribute that digital asset? Two things: a robust investment platform and a solid regulatory framework in place. Since we’re experts in blockchain technology, we will only talk about the former.
Ideally, a security token offering platform boasts certain must-have components such as bulletproof token smart contracts, user wallets, investment dashboards, a KYC mechanism, and payment integrations for onboarding investors with fiat, among other features.
When building digital assets, entrepreneurs usually face a choice between using a plug and play STO platform (there are several on the market) and developing their own custom platform.
Let’s take a quick look at using an already existing security token offering platform to launch an offering versus the idea of developing a proprietary platform. Both have their advantages.
Existing platforms pros:
Custom solution pros:
At LimeChain we have quite some experience building digital asset investment platforms over the last couple of years in the real estate, financial, luxury and movie industries. Our approach is entirely based on building a tailor-made platform for the specific use case. With that being said, there are certain features/components that we see as must-haves for every use case. Those are:
Depending on the use case, we often develop additional features that add extra value to both the digital asset issuer and the user/investor. Such features could be:
To sum up, it’s safe to say that digital assets are here to stay. Assets across different industries are being tokenized as we speak, attracting billions of dollars in investments and the trend is just picking up speed. With blockchain technology becoming more and more mature, expect for industries such as Real Estate, Financial Services, Luxury Goods, and others to be completely blown away by tokenization as it provides benefits to stakeholders across the board. Whether it is an instant settlement, transparency, liquidity, or fractional ownership, it’s quite clear that digital securities are soon going to be the new status quo.
If you want to learn how to create your digital assets with a tailored STO platform or just want to talk about your great idea and how we can make it real, do not hesitate to contact us.
