SmartCon 2023 featured more than 100 blockchain experts and financial industry leaders including founders of influential protocols in the Chainlink ecosystem. To get a closer look at the future of web3, Nasdaq TradeTalks host Jill Malandrino filmed a two-day interview lineup with speakers at this year’s event in Barcelona, Spain.
Chris O’Reilly is Lead Engineer at Harris & Trotter (H&T), a premier London-based accounting firm with a large presence in the digital asset space. In September, H&T announced it will provide third-party attestations to Chainlink Proof of Reserve (PoR) to help unlock advanced use cases that drive global adoption of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). O’Reilly sat down with Malandrino to share his perspective on PoR’s vital role in the proliferation of RWAs.
“Chainlink Proof of Reserve is a live feed of assurance, which provides a much greater level of assurance than the current standard in the industry,” O’Reilly explained. He highlighted the advantages of using PoR for near-real-time onchain updates for reserves backing digital assets compared to annual statutory audits, interim audits, and monthly proof of reserves.
“The live proof of reserves directly solves that problem and it’s going to be that that unlocks many use cases in the near future.”
One such use case is creating a new standard of assurance for stablecoins. “It will give stakeholders and users of these stablecoins the confidence that they are sufficiently collateralized,” he said.
Another big use case for banks is proof of fractional reserves. “At any point in time, customers and central banks will know that their bank or custodian has the sufficient reserves to lend out funds,” he explained. “In truth, the possibilities are pretty much endless.”
O’Reilly believes the transparency and assurance PoR provides are keys to unlock mainstream adoption of RWAs.
“That’s going to give these prospective market entrants the peace of mind and the security that they need to invest in these new tokenized real-world assets,” he said.
He highlighted PoR’s central role in H&T’s future.
“We believe this live style of assurance is what the space really needs,” he said. “That aligns with our vision and we’re going to continue implementing it.”
Watch Jill Malandrino’s full interview with Chris O’Reilly.