Foundry

Foundry is a registry for tracking ownership of securities, tokens and other instruments related to trading. It has been designed around the principles of double entry accounting. Foundry can operate as the ‘source of truth’ or it can synchronise with upstream registries, clearing houses or banks which are the source of truth for cash or holdings.

Trading specialised accounting system

Foundry is a flexible multi-tennanted accounting system which supports specialised transactions related to share trading and settlement. It can programmatically be configured to reflect the arrangement of entities and assets within an exchange.

An installation of Foundry supports multiple registry operators. Each registry operator can be configured with a network of:

• Entity types (owns assets)
• Asset types
• Ledgers (links an asset type to an entity type)

Typical examples of entity types are: Issuer, Investor, Trading Account. These types can be arranged hierarchically reflecting their place in the exchange eco system. They can also be assigned attributes that allow the entities to be easily described and searched.

Typical examples of asset types are: Currency, Token.

A ledger will link one entity to one asset and track transactions between these 2 linked items. For example, a ledger linking entity “Trading Account” to asset “Currency” will record balance related transactions. Likewise a ledger linking entity “Trading Account” to asset “Token” will record holdings related transactions. Ledgers can be set up between any entity and asset. For example, a ledger could link “Issuer” to “Currency”.

Transactions are entered into the system with “Record” types. Each “Record” type will be processed by its own processor and will result in 2 transactions (debit and credit).

Foundry’s flexibility allows it to be customised to wide range of use cases for registries without modification. If a use case requires transaction types not yet supported within Foundry, then these can easily be added using Foundry’s plugin architecture for “Record” processors.

Realtime Synchronisation Registry

Foundry is also a synchronisation registry which keeps track of accounts, their transactions and their holdings and cash balances in real time. It can be the ‘source of truth’ for cash and/or holdings or it can communicate with upstream registries, banks, clearing houses ‘sources of truths’. Foundry can also operate as a sub-registry where an upstream entity keeps track of the aggregate balance (eg. Omnibus bank account) while Foundry tracks of the individual balances.

Foundry also communicates in real time with the Order Management system to:

• track filled orders
• ensure withdrawals do not impact reservations
• synchronise external transactions (eg deposits, dilutions)

The diagram below summarises Foundry’s real time external connectivity:

Banking integration with Foundry is further discussed here.