SEC seeks blockchain data provider to monitor risk, improve compliance, and inform policy
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is getting ever more serious about blockchain data. While many of the world's governments and politicians focus on Facebook's recently introduced Libra and data sharing among virtual asset providers, the SEC is seeking more data on public blockchains.
The requirements listed by the SEC specific that all data is sourced from hosted notes rather than blockchain explorers. The Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchains are mandatory, while Bitcoin Cash, Stellar, Zcash, EOS, NEO and XRP data are all specified as desirable. In addition, as new blockchains gain increased prominence, the SEC would require support for them. The SEC is seeking full blockchain data from the genesis block or inception and information about any derivative currencies (tokens) affiliated with these blockchains.
The required data format is very specific with normalized fields for each included blockchain sourced from on-node data, in its entirety. The minimum fields specified are ticker symbol; send and receive addresses; transaction hash, timestamp and amounts; unspent send and receive balances; transaction fees; confirmations; block hash; and block height.
If possible, the SEC also seeks further metadata and chain metrics such as hashing algorithms, hashing power, mining difficulty and rewards, transactions quantity and size, coin supply and blockchain size.
The data is expected to be provided directly by the vendor's own node for each blockchain using a secure, encrypted data feed; synced with the network; and run in a secure, controlled environment. The data must also be presented with means to validate its accuracy and completeness and meet the requirements of financial statement audit testing.
The contract length will be for one year, followed by four optional 12 month terms. A technical quote and price quote are both required for application. The SEC's deadline for submission by prospective data vendors is 12pm EST on July 11, 2019.
