WHO IS ONLI

Dhryl Anton
Jul 27, 2017 · 5 min read

We have been quietly selling our product to fintech companies who rebrand it as their own crypto-commodity. We began about 9 years ago with a vision to create a whole new industry called the private data economy. We live today in a public data economy. We were around in the early days of bitcoin but we choose to go in a different direction. We have some core philosophical differences with the mainstream blockchain movement. We see it in a completely different way.

from the wikipedia: Blockchain is a distributed database that is used to maintain a continuously growing list of records, called blocks. Each block contains a timestamp and a link to a previous block. A blockchain is typically managed by a peer-to-peer network collectively adhering to a protocol for validating new blocks. By design, blockchains are inherently resistant to modification of the data.

We see blockchain as a data store that uses a cryptographic method to make the data stored, immutable. This cryptographic method has a much wider application than simply maintaining a growing list of records. A peer-to-peer network is one method for controlling who can write to the data store when in a distributed enviroment. However these are all features not properties of the technology. Consequently we went in a completely different direction.

Here is an excerpt from our whitepaper available on our website ONLI.EXCHANGE, which best illustrates our fundamental differences

Software engineering (SE) is the application of engineering to the development of software in a systematic method. Creating software is an engineering process and thus begins with a list of requirements, whether implied or explicit. Engineering is a decision-rich complex problem solving process, with each engineering decision backed by a philosophy that shapes the engineering choices. It is therefore necessary to grasp — from a philosophical standpoint — core departures in the philosophy of the engineering from conventional approaches to a particular solution. This provides the appropriate context for evaluating a new technology and its engineering solutions.

The core philosophical departure that forms the foundation of the Onli platform is the concept of “Actual Possession” versus “Constructive Possession.” Actual possession is having physical control of an object. Constructive Possession is having indirect control of an object but not having Actual Possession of it, in an economic context this forms a legal right to an object that in the custody of another, who is responsible for keeping track of it. With few exceptions, modern financial systems are by default based on Constructive Possession, with a ledger kept by the custodial entity serving as the source of truth for ownership.

For a commodity, possession and ownership are two different concepts. Ownership of a commodity in a conventional financial system is established through a ledger (a record of economic transactions) maintained by an entity. The entity in custody of the commodity, having Actual Possession of it. For example, moving money from one bank to another bank simply involves removing value from one bank’s ledger and adding it to another bank’s ledger. Possession has not changed even though ownership has. Constructive Possession includes a ledger that provides the record of ownership.

The difference between Actual and Constructive Possession is subtle but important as it relates to modern digital currencies, including cryptographic currencies such as Bitcoin. The core problem many digital currencies are attempting to solve is how to ensure value within the ledger is maintained without influence of a central authority. By removing a central authority and placing additional mathematical constraints on the ledger, this eliminates fraud and counterfeiting, promotes low-cost or free transfer, and shifts trust to a democratic process. It can also prevent regulation of users due to the non-existence of a legal entity that could otherwise, as sole custodian, can act unilaterally to change records or be compelled to so (e.g., by a regulator). Since the ledger is the absolute source of truth about ownership, the central engineering problem centers around the integrity of the custodial ledger. The ledger in Custodial Possession is the source of truth.

If a system based on Actual Possession existed, there would be no need for many of the elaborate mechanisms that digital and cryptographic currencies employ because the source of truth in such a system would be possession itself. Perhaps what best illustrate the significance of such a philosophical shift is the seizure example. In order to seize an assets in a Constructive Possession system, a judicial authority need only to seize the ledger and the source of custody. In contrast, in an Actual Possession system, where no third party has control over ownership, the judicial authority must seize the asset directly from the owner. This distinction establishes Onli’s point of differentiation and departure.

In order to digitally create a system of Actual Possession there is a computing science problem that would first need to be solved: uniqueness quantification. In mathematics and logic, the phrase “there is one and only one” is used to indicate that exactly one object with a certain property exists. In mathematical logic, this sort of quantification is known as “uniqueness quantification” or “unique existential quantification.” In other words, there would need to be an object that can be possessed and that object cannot be validly copied or duplicated.

Onli solves the uniqueness quantification problem to define a cryptographic token that can be physically delivered to, and actually possessed by, its owner. This new algorithm enabled the mathematical creation of a relative measure of unique existential quantification. To achieve true uniqueness, since every object in a computer has an owner or user, one must also solve the related problem of identity (how do you know that you are the object owner) and the problem of transmission (how do you move such an object). These scientific challenges have been previously solved by other technologies which are not the subject of this paper. Briefly, we built a specific protocol to facilitate securely moving unique objects called the “Ghost Protocol.” We had previously solved the problem of identity using an evolving “organism” approach in ModeOS, our cloud based development stack. Consequently, we have sufficient ingredients to implement Actual Possession of an electronic token. This algorithm effectively solves the uniqueness quantification problem in that there is now one and only one of a token, hence, the name “Onli”.

ONLI was designed to be a “TABS” (tokenized asset backed securities) platform. It was built with configuration in mind. We see a future where companies encroach on the domain once reserved for countries that of economic freedom. The technology at it’s fundamental level reduces the cost of moving value around to the cost of eletricity. DLT’s cannot compete with that as they are founded on a business model that rents infrastructure and distributes the cost. This will always be exponentially more expensive than committed infrastructure. ONLI isn’t trying to compete with the movement to create immutable public records. We are going in a whole different direction.

Consequently, Onli is different from the ground up. Onli is not a variation of Bitcoin but rather a completely different idea. Onli uses some similar technology and principles of distributed trust, but does not use “Blockchains” in the way Bitcoin or other distributed ledger technology (DLT) does. Onli is built with a different set of requirements and engineered to solve a different problem.

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