India’s securities and commodity market regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has revealed intentions to increase the use cases of blockchain technology in monitoring financial instruments in the country.
In a press release published on the regulator’s official website, SEBI announced it is currently making plans to launch a new platform for “Security and Covenant Monitoring” of non-convertible securities using the distributed ledger technology (DLT).
The watchdog noted that the new security system, set to go live on April 1st, 2022, will closely monitor the credit ratings of non-convertible securities and covenants, which are terms inserted into a debt agreement.
Additionally, it will give the necessary permission to the parties involved. This includes the debenture trustees, issuers, credit rating agencies, and more, to update the data, which would be made accessible to other entities like stock exchanges and depositories.
Since the regulator plans to build the system on the blockchain, it will provide an added layer of security and transparency as inputted data cannot be altered.
SEBI noted that the data stored will be cryptographically signed, time-stamped, and sequentially added to the ledger, providing a verifiable audit trail of transactions.
Furthermore, the transaction history and data stored on the blockchain will be fully encrypted and will only be shared with the necessary stakeholders on a “need-to-know basis.”
The regulator went on to praise blockchain technology, acknowledging that it is so much better for the safekeeping of sensitive data than traditional systems.
“DLT has the potential to provide a more resilient system than traditional centralized databases and offer better protection against different types of cyber-attacks because of its distributed nature, which removes the single point of attack,” SEBI said.
Launching the new system next year will be a landmark moment for the blockchain industry, as it represents a notable step for the use case of the technology within India’s financial ecosystem.
While the Indian government appears to be quite welcoming to the idea of blockchain technology, it is not interested in having anything to do with cryptocurrencies.
The country’s authorities are reportedly making plans to permanently ban the use of private cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ether.