| title | Private Messaging |
|---|---|
| status | ready |
| primary_domain | Identity & Compliance |
| secondary_domain | Trading |
Encrypted communication channels for financial institutions conducting blockchain transactions. Pre-trade negotiation, deal structuring, and counterparty communication contain sensitive information that must remain confidential between parties while supporting regulatory oversight and audit requirements. The solution requires end-to-end encryption with selective disclosure capabilities.
Banks · Trading Desks · Compliance Officers · Regulators · Auditors
Deal negotiation messages contain sensitive pricing, terms, and counterparty information that must remain confidential between parties while supporting regulatory oversight.
Requirements:
- Must hide: Message content, negotiation history, counterparty identities (from third parties)
- Public OK: Existence of communication channel (metadata minimized), message delivery confirmation
- Regulator access: Selective disclosure for investigations; message retention for compliance; audit trail with access logging
Constraints:
- Regulatory record-keeping requirements (MiFID II, Dodd-Frank)
- Integration with existing communication infrastructure
- Message retention periods (typically 5-7 years)
- eDiscovery and legal hold capabilities
Settlement instructions, confirmation messages, and reconciliation communications contain sensitive transaction details.
Requirements:
- Must hide: Specific transaction terms, settlement details, error/exception handling
- Public OK: Settlement completion status
- Regulator access: Transaction audit trail, exception monitoring
Constraints:
- STP (straight-through processing) requirements
- Integration with settlement systems
- Multi-party coordination (custodians, clearing, etc.)
See detailed solution architecture and trade-offs in Approach: Private Institutional Messaging: anchored off-chain messaging as the practical default (encrypted counterpart channels, periodic integrity anchors, scoped disclosure keys), mixnet-routed messaging when counterparty graph secrecy matters, and on-chain encrypted channels for deal milestones where no intermediary may hold the record.
- What changes from existing systems (e.g., Bloomberg messaging) when moving to blockchain?
- Is on-chain messaging necessary, or is off-chain with on-chain anchoring sufficient?
- How do retention and eDiscovery requirements interact with encryption?
- Related: Pre-trade negotiation in private-bonds.md, private-fx.md, private-derivatives.md
- Related: private-identity.md (identity for message authentication)