Neo Visual TokenDesigner
A Standards-based Approach to Digital Assets
Digital Assets
Digital assets are programmable assets that exist in the form of electronic data. With blockchain technology, the digitization of assets can be decentralized, trustful, traceable, highly transparent, and free of intermediaries. On the Neo blockchain, users can register, trade, and circulate multiple types of assets. Proving the connection between digital and physical assets is possible through digital identity. Assets registered through a validated digital identity are protected by law.
Digitization or tokenization is the activity of transforming rights — or a unit of asset ownership — into a digital asset or token on a blockchain. Tokenization may be applied to regulated financial instruments (e.g. equities, bonds), tangible assets (e.g. real estate, gold), and to intellectual property (e.g. songs, media) and more.
The tokenization of physical assets brings a plethora of benefits, ranging from reach (global-scale), decreased settlement times, reduction in counterparty risk, reduced costs for securities reconciliation, increased collateral availability and more.
The Motivation for Industry Standards
Standards enable and constrain requirements, specifications, and attributes that are typically used to ensure that products and services meet their pre-established purpose and that they deliver outcomes as expected.
In the technology domain, standards enable varied technology capabilities to work seamlessly together and they establish and reinforce trust in order that markets may operate efficiently and effectively. They server as the substrate behind the ‘lego’ blocks of products and services by instituting coherent protocols that can be widely understood, applied, and validated. This facilitates integration, interoperability and compatibility and drives productivity, growth and progress globally.
Without standards, the Internet as we know it could not exist; without standards, our ability to connect, communicate and collaborate using tools such as email and messaging could not exist; and without standards the plumbing that powers blockchain protocols would be sufficiently primitive that much of the cryptographic engineering that we take for granted would be well-nigh impossible.
It is through the application of standards that the core requirements of interconnectivity and interoperability can be assured. It is only through the application of standards that we can push the envelope, building on the shoulders of giants, as we break new ground for tomorrow’s digital economy. The vision of the Smart Economy will be realized on a core set of open industry standards such as the Token Taxonomy Framework, leading to intrinsic interoperability and integration at global-scale.
Token Taxonomy Framework — What it is
The Token Taxonomy Framework was designed with the objective of bridging the gap between developers, business analysts and managers, and policy makers and public regulators, enabling them to work together to model, architect, design, validate and to create and deploy new business models and networks based on tokens.
The Token Taxonomy Framework has a set of explicit goals:
- Educate — take a step back and CLEARLY define a token in non-technical and cross industry terms using real world, everyday analogies so ANYONE can understand them using properties and behaviors to describe and define them.
- Define a common set of concepts and terms that can be used by business, technical, and regulatory participants to speak the same language.
- Produce token definitions that have clear and understood requirements that are implementation neutral for developers to follow and standards organizations to validate.
- Establish a base Token Classification Hierarchy (TCH) driven by metadata that is simple to understand and navigate for anyone interested in learning and discovering Tokens and underlying implementations.
- Deliver tooling meta-data using the TTF syntax that enables the generation of visual representations of classifications, and modelling tools to view and create token definitions mapped to the taxonomy.
- Use terminology that is neutral to programming language and blockchain, distributed ledger or other distributed medium where tokens reside.
- Encourage open and collaborative workshops to accelerate the creation of powerful vertical industry applications and innovation for platforms, start-ups, and enterprises.
- Produce standard artifacts and control message descriptions mapped to the taxonomy that are implementation neutral and provide base components and controls that consortia, startups, platforms or regulators can use to work together.
- Encourage differentiation and vertical specialization while maintaining an interoperable base.
- Include a sandbox environment for legal and regulatory requirement discovery and input
- Be used in taxonomy workshops for defining existing or new tokens which results in a contribution back to the framework to organically grow and expand across industries for maximum re-use.
- A token is a digital representation of some shared value. The value can be intrinsically digital with no external physical form or be a receipt or title for a material item or property. A purely digital token represents value directly, where the other references that actual value, or at least a claim to it. For example, a crypto currency like Bitcoin is intrinsically digital since it has no referenced physical form, but 1 kg of tokenized gold would.
- An account or wallet (which can aggregate several accounts) represents a repository of tokens attributed to an owner. An owner is given an “address” which uniquely identifies the owner, and the owner possesses the key to that address. A token’s owner is a reference to an address and a wallet is a reference to an address for an owner. The wallet can provide a view into token balances in one place for the owner, much like a bank account or bank summary of accounts.
Neo Visual TokenDesigner — Leading with a Standards-based Approach
Neo Visual TokenDesigner is the industry-leading toolset to realize the Token Taxonomy Framework in action. The Visual TokenDesigner provides the best-in-class experience to instantiate the artifacts that collectively constitute the Token Taxonomy Framework.
The TokenDesigner is built using the principle of composition; the tools can be used to compose or create new token definitions as well as to decompose or take-apart pre-existing token definitions in order to create more sophisticated token definitions. Below is a snapshot of a ‘Diploma Token’ definition designed with the TokenDesigner:
Let us drill down into some of the core concepts: a token definition is a template for how to create a specific token; and a token class is an instantiation of the template. There are two base token types, the well-known fungible and non-fungible (NFT) types, that share a set of common properties and differ with respect to their relative value and uniqueness. There can also be hybrid tokens, which enables the developer to define a variety of combinations thereof.
A significant surface area of the Token Taxonomy Framework comprises of behavior artifacts. Some of these behaviors may apply to any token type such as Transferable, Mint-able i.e. Issuable and Burnable i.e. Retire etc. Again, based on the principle of composition, there may be combinations of behaviors that are used repeatedly i.e. a pattern as in Supply Control that packages Mint, Burn and Roles in unison. When the developer add this to the template the resulting token will support the minting (issuing) of new tokens, allow the burning (retiring) of tokens and the assigning of a role or group to the mint or issue behavior.
Using the base, behavior and behavior groups the developer can begin building the token definition template using the Visual TokenDesigner. In addition, there are properties, which are essentially data fields for a token. Properties are either behavioral or non-behavioral. A behavioral property is one that is required and controlled by a behavior; a non-behavioral property may be stand alone and is applied to the base token e.g. the roles behavior indicates that the token class should support the notion of a role or group that can have members. The role can then be bound to another behavior to indicate that only members of the role can invoke the behavior i.e. Supply Control defines a Minters role that is bound to the Mint-able behavior. A non-behavioral property usually reflects an item number (SKU) for instance. There is no specific behavior tied to these properties but defining them in a property set artifact and adding it to the template implies that the token definition implements the property.
We are very happy to announce the Visual TokenDesigner toolset and to demo; we are working very closely with the creators of the TTF and the teams inside the Azure Blockchain team at Microsoft, and will be launching the v1 release in the Summer of 2020.
In Summary
Standards provide communities and companies with a shared basis and a starting point for common understanding, and they enable the development of tools to accelerate communication, collaboration and commerce. Standardized artifacts are increasingly pervasive and serve as the building blocks for enabling the next wave of tokenization, as assets are digitized.
We believe in the power and potential of open industry standards in realizing the vision of the Smart Economy.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the pioneering work done by Marley Gray of the Azure Blockchain team at Microsoft, and we thank him for his leadership and his visionary support of our team as we envisioned and built the Visual TokenDesigner toolset based on his guidance.
Author: John deVadoss
