Cryptoshares and You

by Jonathan Fries

Want to try a frustrating search? Try looking for companies that can help you incorporate your business on the blockchain or using distributed ledger. What will you search for?

  • incorporate on the blockchain?
  • build company on blockchain?
  • start company on blockchain?

Those are all a bust, because you'll run into a lot of noise about creating blockchain-based products and forming a company around them.

The word you're looking for is 'cryptoshares', but, in all honesty, that won't help you that much either. You just have to google for a while until you come across one of a couple of articles that help get you get oriented in this space.

There's a definite SEO opportunity here.

So, to take some of the pain out of it for you, and to add myself to the list of helpful articles, here are a few companies/projects currently working in this space:

Otonomous offers away to create a distributed ledger-based company, and they can help you incorporate in several different international jurisdictions. It is built on Ethereum.

Counterparty uses the bitcoin blockchain and 'writes in the margins' of bitcoin transactions to build smart contracts. Their software (open source) is the Counterparty protocol, it is Bitcoin-aware and enables these transactions.

CoinOffering uses Ethereum smart contracts to incorporate your business. Their software is also open source, and like the others above, they offer services to help you get set up. Interestingly, they are part of (or somehow related to) Cryptonimica and discuss International Arbitration and Cryptography Centre which is some type of online dispute resolution system. From the outside it appears that the idea is a cryptography-based, online arbitration system or court. Interesting.

OpenAssets is an open source protocol with some reference implementations on github. It doesn't seem to have a service organization around it as the others do. This means you're free to do with it what you want, but you will be figuring it out.

Using the 'judging a book by its cover' system. I've ordered these in level of maturity. Otonomous and Counterparty have actual (non-github) web sites, and Otonomous appears ready to help you incorporate in both the real world and online.

CoinOffering is building up their service, and has incorporated themselves. OpenAssets appears to be just a protocol, for now.

Also interesting is that Delaware seems to be pushing ahead to be the first US jurisdiction to allow this type of online, cryptography-based incorporation.