Digital Asset Marketplaces provide a complete framework for their users. They act as a trusted intermediary between issuers and investors by proposing a set of tools and services to facilitate transactions between the different players. These tools can be made directly available to the users, and/or additional services can be provided in order to enhance the customer experience.

Who are the stakeholders?

The principal objective of an online marketplace is to connect several players. When it comes to an investment-related marketplace, the main players are issuers, investors, the marketplace operator, and possibly other service providers.

Investors

Investors are looking for quality investment products. A DAM is first and foremost a central, easily accessible venue where they can discover financial securities. They want direct access to information in order to assess investment opportunities, expected benefits and associated risks. Ideally, the marketplace, knowing the investor’s profile, only offers them products they are eligible to subscribe for.

Services required for investors:

Issuers

For issuers, the main goal of a marketplace is to reach an audience. If the issuer already has a regular customer base, they can decide to become the operator of its own marketplace by offering a website where its investors can discover and subscribe to one or more of its projects. More generally, issuers can also come into contact with larger marketplace operators who can aggregate several issuers and their investment products, offering a greater choice to their users.

Services required for issuers:

Marketplace Operator

The operator of the marketplace is the entity and team that provides the solutions and services to investors and issuers. The operator helps the latter to work in a safe environment through the application of a robust governance policy and the clear definition of rules and responsibilities that apply to the marketplace. For example, the operator will conduct its due diligence on the projects listed on the platform, provide software where Issuers can enter their offering information and documents, control the access to this information by verifying the information of the Investors and so on.

The main role of the marketplace operator is to enter into a cycle where supply brings demand and more demand brings more supply, all within the context in which their service improves through networking effects. The marketplace aggregates an audience by helping its users with the curation of content and products proposed on the platform.

Services required for the operator:

We’re looking forward to explaining more in the next article. If you can’t wait, this is an excerpt taken from the ebook we published with CoinTelegraph, download here: