07/28/2021
Having been in “centralized” financial services for 40 years, I can’t describe with 100% accuracy all the moving parts of how back-office operations worked.
30+ years at Cboe Global Markets as a Lead Market Maker, Book Clerk, index & equity pit trader, off-floor market maker & risk manager; we “trusted” how trade, clearing, settlement, stock loan, margin, exercise & assignments all worked. And it worked very well!
Many of the losses caused by technology were from algorithmic trading engines never anticipating a new data character in the string our price feed.
One unexpected period, Shift or in the price feed and the trading engines went haywire. ( Hey, quote $1.00 bid @ $100 until we figure this out!!!!)
However, the future of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is here; and it’s here to stay. You cannot put the genie back into the bottle.
UMA ( Universal Market Access) offers “priceless” financial contracts. Priceless financial contracts are smart contracts that only require an on-chain price feed in the event of a dispute.
Decentralized oracle (trusted price feeds or other sources of truth) solutions today consist of API's that repeatedly submit price data on-chain to manage DeFi contracts. These solutions also have no way to dispute an incorrect price reported from an API. This makes contracts vulnerable to corruption, manipulation, flash loan attacks and ad-hoc market events.
Priceless financial contracts are contracts that only require writing a price on-chain in the event of a dispute (which is designed to be rare). Priceless contracts minimize reliance on oracles, making contracts on UMA less vulnerable to attacks.
UMA was founded in 2018 by Allison Lu and Hart Lambur, two ex Goldman Sachs traders, with the goal to enable users to transfer risk across the internet without the need of central authorities. The team drew inspiration from traditional finance derivatives to define an open-source protocol to allow anyone, anywhere, to design and build trustless financial contracts.
Trading at $8.34, UMA is -79% from its February (FOMO) 2021 high of $40.77, but +8.75% YTD. Available for trading on Coinbase
Website: https://umaproject.org/
Twitter: https://lnkd.in/gmGdaXU
If your investment advisor doesn’t discuss digital assets; it may be time to switch advisors. www.cenaclecapital.com
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