By
Wanguba Muriuki
July 4th, 2019
The new Issued Assets (IA) program on Liquid sidechain will allow users to create their own tokenized assets which can represent any financial instrument.
On July 2, blockchain startup Blockstream announced launching the Issued Assets (IA) program on its bitcoin-backed Liquid sidechain.
We are excited to introduce #IssuedAssets on Liquid! Users will be able to issue assets representing existing financial instruments such as tokenized fiat, #crypto assets, gold coins, & completely new assets all on a secure #Bitcoin-backed #sidechain. ⛓️ https://t.co/PkE1PnlGrK pic.twitter.com/lXSfJR64Mn
— Blockstream (@Blockstream) July 2, 2018
According to the press release, Issued Assets (IA) allow Liquid users to create their own token asset on the Liquid sidechain. These assets can represent existing financial instruments like tokenized fiat, crypto assets, attested assets (e.g. gold coins), or completely new assets.
The features of Issued Assets on Liquid include issuing a new asset in any quantity, sending a single transaction with several assets, transacting privately using Confidential Transactions, with amounts and asset type known only to the parties of the transaction, and destroying quantities of an asset. Issued Assets can also, optionally, be created such that additional quantities of the asset can be issued over time.
“These features allow for use cases like the creation of digitizable collectables, reward points, token sales, and fiat, all of which can be issued on Liquid,” Blockstream said.
Using atomic swaps on Liquid, you don’t need to have a trusted third party to trade one asset for another. A bitcoin or asset swap can be completed in a single transaction, as Issued Assets and bitcoin can both be inputs and outputs of a Liquid transaction. Issued Assets also represent alternative cryptocurrencies on the network, so users are able to create a single transaction in Liquid that contains different assets.
The production version of IA will be released in the coming weeks, with further updates coming.
The technology was first unveiled during Coindesk’s Consensus conference held in New York in May. The three-day conference started on May 14 and had more than 4000 attendees. Among them such prominent industry leaders as Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President James Bullard, Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey, and FedEx Corp. CEO Frederick Smith could be heard.
Blockstream is the leading provider of blockchain technologies, on the forefront of work in cryptography and distributed systems. Its mission is to solve problems that undermine trust in today’s financial systems. Blockstream provides a range of software and hardware solutions and expert professional services to companies deploying new blockchain-based networks.
Blockstream is working with leading investors from Asia, Europe and North America, including alphabetically AME Cloud Ventures, AXA Strategic Ventures, Blockchain Capital, Digital Currency Group, Digital Garage, Future\Perfect Ventures, Horizons Ventures, and others.
Recently, Blockstream released C-lightning 6.0. As was previously reported by Coinspeaker, the changes that came with the release involved many spheres. C-lightning came with using a more lightweight bandwidth mechanism, compared with the previous version based on exchanging full network views. C-lightning 6.0 introduced the full-fledged wallet and started supporting both on-chain and off-chain funds.
