Firmo: Working smarter across the blockchain

It all started with the introduction of a universally accepted decentralised currency in early 2009, known as bitcoin.

How Time Flies
Sometime in May, 2010 with the price of bitcoin still hovering around the $0.08 mark, Laszlo Hanyecz exchanged 10,000 coins for two pizzas. This was credited as the first bitcoin transaction. Things took off from there-in leaps and bounds.

A little while later, While working on a bitcoin project, a certain Vitalik Buterin identified some problems he noticed with Bitcoin. He conceived the idea of Ethereum, which is a platform that enables developers to build decentralized applications for the blockchain. He was of the thought that the blockhain should not be limited to financial use.

Ethereum was birthed to deploy smart contracts and also DApps.

As you may or might not know, Ethereum has been plagued with a myriad of scaling issues.

A year is a long time in blockchain years, and over the past year, we have seen incredible changes. Tokens and ICO’s to suit different purposes are being launched in the hundreds, every month.

Can we go one step better?
One of these solutions that could shape the future of blockchain is Firmo. Firmo is at the alpha stage of creating an alternative infrastructure for financial contracts, which would have the advantage of being transparent, fair and void of trust issues. To rephrase this, they are building infrastructure for the cryptoeconomy, which can be leveraged and applied in various ways.

Firmo enables derivatives such as options, futures, loans and swaps to be secure within the crypto ecosystem.

Firmo have created a domain specific language known as FirmoLang to enable the writing of contracts, seeing the Firmo Protocol executes financial contracts on the blockchain. It’s a simple-syntax based on Haskell (functional programming language).

Unique Qualities of Firmo You Should Know About
Firmo has come along with some handy tools, to create a more secure ecosystem.

Firmo Protocol Stack
This is a tool that enables anyone to create automated/secure smart derivatives. This is achieved by using FirmoLang, which we will look at in a bit.
Smart derivatives/other financial contracts that use FirmoLang can be compiled to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), via a FirmoLang compiler.

Contract-oriented languages such as Solidity are powerful tools for creating smart contracts for the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), but they are prone to hacks, and for this reason they are not secure for creating smart derivatives-which still takes us to the reason behind the creation of FirmoLang.

What does this mean for stakeholders?

For individuals: The Firmo Protocol Stack would enable them to get into smart derivative contracts in order to trade their positions to third parties on alternatives.

For Cryptocurrency Exchanges: Exchanges will be able to offer customers secure derivative products. They will also be in a position to to act as clearing institutions in any given smart derivative contract.

For Financial institutions:Seeing the benefits this has, regular financial institutions can harness the Firmo Protocol Stack to reduce the costs involved in clearing and settlement of derivatives.

Smart Derivatives
Smart derivatives are a certain type of secure smart financial contract. They can be traded on any regulated exchange that supports the Firmo Protocol.
When derivatives are tied up to contracts(individuals), it mitigates factors that could lead to losses in the future. Seeing time is no longer a critical factor for price determination as a result of this, this naturally translates to stability within the system.

Of course, all smart derivatives are written with FirmoLang, and there are two current offerings, namely:
Deployment of Template Contracts-templates offered by Firmo that will be in partnership with exchanges. These will be written in FirmoLang, and would be customised to the exchangers needs.

Deployment of customized contracts-this would enable users to create smart derivatives. It would also enable them to create smart contracts when the need arises.

Formal verification proves the logical correctness in programming languages, by making use of mathematical modeling. This is the system we see being applied and used daily in trains and aeroplanes. Being verified ensures that lives aren’t being put at risk. This also ensures that smart derivatives are deployed securely.

Locating bugs and preventing disasters waiting to happen.

FirmoLang
When 19,366 contracts deployed on the Ethereum mainnet were checked by a team of researchers from the University of Singapore, it was discovered that about 44% of them had vulnerabilities.
A major problem is that many of the proposed solutions working on derivatives on distributed infrastructure are not verified, which essentially means that they can only offer single instruments.
FirmoLang is a formally verified domain specific language. Creating FirmoLang enables users (companies and individuals) to formulate a host of financial instruments on decentralised infrastructures.
When programming with FirmoLang and an error is made in the syntax, the contract would not be compiled, and it will also let the user know that an error has occurred.

Forward Contract
The forward contract is used to mitigate against risks in the future-assurance if you will. It gives a buyer an obligation to purchase at an agreed time in the future. This would involve a physical exchange, with respect to the asset in the equation.

Videos

very brief explanation about Firmo

how is Firmo different?

Conclusion

Firmo is totally focused on being the standard for derivatives on all blockchains, seeing their language is probably the only verified option out there.

Having a verifiedsolution is clearly invaluable to the industry because stakeholders can concentrate on their core products/services, knowing that they have a solid foundation to build on that is not vulnerable or suspect to redundancy.

Change is the only constant in life, and hopefully, Firmo can build on this unique offering. These are definitely interesting times to be alive!

More Information & Resources:

To find out more about Firmo, kindly visit their website

To read the Technical Paper, click here

To ask questions about Firmo, contact them Telegram here

To contact Firmo on Reddit click here

To contact Firmo on Twitter click here

To contact Firmo on Facebook click here

Entry to @originalworks contest

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