Last night, the media in the circle went crazy with the news that Bank of China International (BOCI), with the help of UBS (UBS), issued fully digital structured notes worth 200 million yuan on Ethereum. According to UBS official report [1], this is the first Chinese financial institution to issue tokenized security (tokenized security) in Hong Kong.

What caused some people in the circle to collectively climax was not UBS’s issuance of blockchain notes—as early as December last year, UBS issued $50 million in tokens on a permissioned blockchain. Fixed-rate notes[1] - But this time, UBS said they sent tokenized notes to Ethereum.

Look carefully at UBS's wording: ... tokenized on the main Ethereum blockchain, successfully introducing regulated securities onto a public blockchain.

The translation is: ...tokenization on the main Ethereum blockchain (main chain), successfully introducing compliant securities to a public chain.

However, UBS did not disclose blockchain-related information such as on-chain records or hash values ​​of on-chain transactions anywhere. So everyone was confused. Has it been issued or not? Where was it sent?

Some people claim that the case has been "solved": UBS did not issue notes on the Ethereum mainnet. It is estimated that they used the enterprise version of Ethereum, which is a self-built private chain or alliance chain using Ethereum technology.

But, if you say that, why do you have to add "main"? What's more, the second half of the sentence immediately follows, and it is introduced into the "public chain". If you only use Ethereum code, a self-built private chain or a consortium chain, then UBS's wording is obviously misleading.

So there are three possibilities:

The first one, which is the one that everyone is most excited about, is indeed issued on the Ethereum mainnet. Different from the previous issuance by many financial institutions on private chains and alliance chains, this is the first time we are issuing on public chains. This explanation is the smoothest in expression and matches UBS’s official announcement very well.

The second type, according to some netizens, is actually an over-promotion. There is no exception for the issuance, it is still issued on a private chain or alliance chain, and the so-called "public chain" is just a twist on the "technical code of the public chain".

There is a third possibility, which is that UBS uses Ethereum technology to create a public chain, similar to BSC. However, there is no currency issuance, so it is more like the so-called open alliance chain in China, which is accounting. Nodes have access to Proof of Authority or a variant, but the entire blockchain ledger is open to the public and is subject to public witness and supervision.

In this case, UBS calls it a "public chain", which seems to make sense. However, the “main Ethereum blockchain” in the first half of the sentence still cannot be justified. The expression "main blockchain" seems to refer to the main chain or main network of Ethereum.

If we want to completely find out the truth, it seems we can only wait for further clarification from UBS. #ETH #BTC