1/ Today @UMAprotocol is publishing our design for a Data Verification Mechanism (DVM), a blockchain oracle with **economic guarantees** around the cost of corrupting the system.

We're ALSO releasing our v1 code + deploying it to Kovan!

Read on for why this is needed... 2/ Code is here: github.com/UMAprotocol/pr…
White paper is here: github.com/UMAprotocol/wh…
Kovan deployment is here: kovan.etherscan.io/address/0x16aB…

1/ How @UMAprotocol enables "Trustless Tokenization", aka how to create an ERC20 token for synthetic crypto or *real-world* asset exposure in ETF-like format. Mechanics below for creation, re-margining, and redemption (or default): 2a/ Context: Investor wants gold exposure with notional N and is willing to pay a fee F for this service. Provider is responsible for passing the total return of gold to Investor through the smart contract and earns fee F for doing so.

1/ Important paper published by my friend Prof Tonetti (@ChrisTonetti) and his colleague Prof Jones @StanfordGSB. They have rigorously studied the "economics of data" to show that there are large social gains from letting users own and sell their own data. Some key takeaways: 2/ Jones and Tonetti show that data can be considered a "non-rival" good. Just like ideas, data is not depleted through use. This is in stark contrast to most goods in the economy which are "rival" and can only be used by one person or firm at a time.