For years now, the attention of the world has remained focused on the financial implications of the cryptocurrency revolution. And that makes sense because the crypto market has grown to a valuation of over $2 trillion. But if you remember a few years ago, the financial aspect of cryptocurrencies wasn't what had most people excited. It was the blockchain. Early on, the business world seized on blockchain technology as the true killer app to emerge from the birth of Bitcoin and its descendants. But as time went on it started to become clear that blockchain wasn't the secure data storage panacea that it was made out to be. And that reality has hampered most businesses' attempts to use it in an effective way. And here at , we struggled with the limitations of the blockchain as we sought to build out our RegTech platform. But then, we realized that there was a better way. A way that leveraged the unique security offered by blockchain technology while driving down data storage costs. And even better, it created an ERC20-based token transaction system that ensured auditability for our users' data. Here's an overview of what we're building and why we think it's the future of RegTech. Sekuritance What is RegTech? To understand the ecosystem we're developing, you must first understand the services it's meant to facilitate. As a RegTech innovator, we provide various services that help businesses comply with whatever regulations they're subject to. For that reason, we were looking to offer PCI-compliant data storage, KYC and AML functions, and risk-scoring for businesses. But unlike incumbent providers of such services, we wanted to offer a unified ecosystem that brought our suite of services together with third-party integration opportunities. And that's where the SKRT utility token comes into play. A Blockchain-Agnostic Platform The SKRT utility token is the transaction medium that unites the Sekuritance RegTech Platform. It's how we track all data vault queries, checks, transactions, traces, and findings. It ties our non-blockchain technology stack to an auditable blockchain that guarantees an audit trail for every service we offer. And our customers use it as the primary means of accessing our services. At present, the SKRT smart contract operates on top of the Ethereum ERC-20 protocol to establish liquidity and a trading regime. But we've built the system to be blockchain-agnostic. That means it can run on Bitcoin, Ethereum, or private permissioned blockchains like Hyperledger. We think that's a critical feature – because the Achilles heel of all blockchain projects is forced obsolescence when newer, better protocols emerge. An All-In-One Solution By establishing the SKRT token and its underlying smart contract, we've been able to create a hybrid system we call the SekurSuite™ product suite. It offloads the payment processing and auditing functionalities to the SKRT ecosystem while the underlying data storage and processing take place in a distributed cloud setting. In this way, we were able to leverage commodity hardened data storage facilities to create a PCI-compliant infrastructure, while creating an immutable access trail via SKRT. But as we've mentioned, we had another motivation for tying our platform together with the SKRT utility token. By creating a token economy, we hope to encourage the adoption of our product suite as well as to encourage third-party developers to publish their products within our ultra-secure app ecosystem. That will allow us to grow our ecosystem into a true hub for RegTech innovation that will push the boundaries of what's possible with current technologies. It will also foster the development of successor technologies by bringing the best and brightest RegTech and blockchain development minds under a single roof. A New Identity Data Model We've also created a program called the Partner Network Rewards System. It's designed to award points to individuals and businesses every time their information is processed by us or any of our partner data providers. Then, the individuals or businesses can claim their data profiles and use their token balance for services through our network – or they can withdraw them to use as they see fit. But most importantly, those profiles will allow for user feedback. This means those who claim their profile will be able to have some direct input into how others view their data. For example, they'll have the opportunity to comment on or explain negative information in their profile, as well as highlight positive information. In a world where we have little control over the information available about us online, and where others' impressions of that data shape our destinies – we see this as a revolutionary feature. The Future of RegTech Going forward, we're looking forward to continuing to refine the SKRT ecosystem and we invite interested developers to explore the opportunities it provides. Together, we hope to create the foundations for a new secure data and RegTech infrastructure to meet the demands of the 21st century. And in the process, we want to leverage blockchain to create the true killer app everyone expected it to spawn. We think we're on the right track. And with your help, we're going to prove it. Featured image: WrightStudio / Adobe Stock
