Talk:Algorithmic Contract Types Unified Standards

References for history section
There were six cites in the 14 sentences. I have added more references. If you feel this is not sufficient, please be specific and say which facts you feel are not supported by a refernce.

Yankinthebank (talk) 13:12, 30 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I should also point out that ACTUS is the second of 3 sources for the OFR's work. Both the first (ISO 20022) and FIX, which was added a year after ACTUS, already have Wikipedia pages.

Complexity of text
hello @TahoeBlue, Thanks for your contribution. I did a lot of thinking about making this text understandable to a wide audience. It took 4 months to get this approved with the comment: 'assessed as C-Class, which is recorded on its talk page. This is a great rating for a new article, and places it among the top 19% of accepted submissions.'

In my view, the reworking you have done is far too complex. The 2nd sentence has gone from 52 to 76 words. It is unintelligible.

The 2nd paragraph you have added is 122w; the first sentence is 56 words. If you put this text through a grammar checker for a legibility analysis it comes out as off the scale!

You appear to be an expert in the topic. Please revise your changes for a general audience. Yankinthebank (talk) 21:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your feedback, @Yankinthebank. I think you make some good points about introducing the topic to a general audience.  I do think that it will be important to follow up with additional information about the topic for those with more specific interests or background.  However, I will revise the opening paragraphs along the lines that you suggest. TahoeBlue (talk) 17:47, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi TahoeBlue, Great. I'll look out for that. I'm starting on research to add other material, so I'll be dipping in again soon. Yankinthebank (talk) 23:12, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Better separation of the block-chain topic
Hello @Yankinthebank You did a fantastic job. I happen to be Willi Brammertz and was astonished to find this excelently written text. Actually we tried entering an article on ACTUS a few years back which was declined on some strange arguments. There is one section, where the article can be improved in my opinion (I refer to the state of the article about one week ago).

I think the following paragraph would gain in clarity, if we split it. Instead of: The concepts were expanded upon by Brammertz and Allan I. Mendelowitz in a 2018 paper in the Journal of Risk Finance. They describe the need for software that turns natural language contracts into algorithms – smart contracts – that automate financial processes. The idea of such contracts predates digital currencies, but because there are only a limited number of cash flow exchange patterns, they identify less than three dozen smart contracts. Underlying these contracts there has to be a data dictionary that standardizes contract terms. In addition, the smart contracts have access to information representing the state of the world and which affects contractual obligations. This information would include variables such as market risk and counterparty risk held in online databases that are outside the blockchain (sometimes called "oracles"). We should write something like this (to be improved): The concepts were expanded upon by Brammertz and Allan I. Mendelowitz in a 2018 paper in the Journal of Risk Finance. They describe the need for software that turns natural language contracts into algorithms – smart contracts – that automate financial processes. Because there are only a limited number of cash flow exchange patterns, they identify less than three dozen smart contracts. Underlying these contracts there has to be a data dictionary that standardizes contract terms. In addition, the smart contracts have access to information representing the state of the world and which affects contractual obligations. This information would include variables such as market risk and counterparty risk held in online databases, or in the case of blockchains accessed via so called "oracles". The idea of the standardized algorithmic representation of financial contracts predates digital currencies but are highly relevant for block-chains or distributed ledgers. Brammertz and Mendelowitz argue in their paper presented at the 2019 Cardano Summit in Miami (Samrt Financial Contracts Revisited) that without such a standard, the chaos already a reality in banks would potentiate, since every contract could be written individually on block-chains with Turing complete languages. They further argue that of the four conditions set by Szabo (link) in his article published in 1996 (Smart Contracts, Extropy), block chains with a Turing complete programming languages fulfill only one, namely Observability. What is not met is Verifiability due to its unstandardized and difficult to read nature especially in the financial sector. The third condition Enforceability is therefore also not met since it is maximized by the combination of Observabiltiy and Verifiability. The ACTUS standard fulfills the Verifiability condition for financial contract wherefor Enforceability is maximized. The fourth condition is Privity, which is a separate issue to be solved.


 * End

In my opinion it is importatn to separate, because the term "smart contract" is used on the block-chain in a very specific way. In the block-chain world of today, the term "smart contract" simply means any program written and executed on the block-chain. If we go back to Szabo it means much more and I think it is worthwhile to go back to Szabo's definition (actually the implementors of Ethereum - which I happen to know quite well - referred to Szabo as well).

Willi WBRAriadne (talk) 07:02, 10 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi WBRAriadne, You’re right, I have made quite a leap about smart contracts in that ‘The idea of such…’ paragraph. I’ve looked up the Cradano summit you mention, but there’s garbage there now; also, the Web archive version is incomplete with no link to your paper. In any case, I’m not certain a commercial event like that would meet Wikipedia criteria.
 * Finding solid references was one of the problems in doing the page. I don't have access to academic subscription papers. However, Szabo seems to be a good way into the foundations of ACTUS to expand the page. I'll work on that. Thanks for the comments. Yankinthebank (talk) 23:10, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Here is a link to the paper.
 * https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3373187
 * This might interest you as well, it is a collection of papers where I am involved: https://www.brammertz-consulting.ch/publications-and-events/articles/ WBRAriadne (talk) 07:22, 18 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Yankinthebank (talk) 23:10, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Adding ACTUS into the title
@Yankinthebank I think it would be helpful, if the word "ACTUS" were in the title, possibly in brackets. Most people would look it up under the word "ACTUS" in Wiki. I tried doing so, but it would not show up - I guess because it is not in the title.

Btw: I do not put it myself into the title for two reasons. First I think you write so excellently that I don't want to interfere. 2) I even don't know how to edit the title. WBRAriadne (talk) 09:54, 11 July 2023 (UTC)


 * You're right – but you're not the only one who can't change a title! Please feel free to change if you can work it out. Yankinthebank (talk) 22:54, 17 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I added the link to this site on the disambiguation page on "ACTUS". I think this should help.
 * I will add yet the link to ISO. 2001:171B:C9B1:50B0:6C51:DEBB:D731:9344 (talk) 07:39, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Feedback from New Page Review process
I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: nice work

North8000 (talk) 02:55, 6 September 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi North8000, Thank you for the comment. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to improve things. One for the New Year Resolution list.Yankinthebank (talk) 13:04, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Adding a transaltion of the text in German and Chinese
I have a German and a Chinese Translation of the text. How can I do this? WBRAriadne (talk) 09:29, 28 September 2023 (UTC)