It was a belt and braces move, in as much as the regulators forced the blockchain administered issuance to run along side a standard practice bond floating suite of old school procedures. Very Dry Run indeed. but I guess that's to be expected given the size involved and the white hat reputation of the issuer.
For the exact lingo check out this article: https://blogs.wsj.com/cfo/2017/07/12/daimler-uses-blockchain-to-issue-bonds/
Anyway, Herr Schafer raised several concerns in the article that need resolving: (1) " who bears responsibility for potentially faulty program code?"; (2) "Are smart contracts an automated execution of a conventional contract?" and (3) "Is the paper form still indispensable for contracts?"
Taking Q 3 first, it is hard to believe that paper trumps digital in this day and age isn't it? Is this why lawyers are still killing trees by the oil tanker load and buying stock in Weyerhaeuser? There is just no justification for this antediluvian, atavistic, retrogressive behavior. Are we still using quill pens? When Elon Musk's team lands on Mars will they be writing letters home by snail mail on A4?
Seems to me, one of few remaining legit reasons to have a United Nations meeting in NYC is to cut through the clog in the drain pipe of the digital age by agreeing on a new non paper digitized mobile phone compliant standard that recognizes and embalm contracts in every jurisdiction worldwide sans cellulose.
Q 1: Who bears responsibility for bad code? Depends on who wrote it. If that can't be determined by an independent code writing umpire than it goes to a new court of code arbitration.
Q 2: Are smart contracts automated executions of a "conventional contract"? This is a Rubik's Cube puzzle. One face of the cube, let's say the blue face is a philosophical conundrum, the yellow face is a natural language to code fidelity symmetry issue, the red face is a legal interpretation by court jurisdiction parochial territory preference model, and the Green face has something to do with whether Code Is Really Law.
Obviously, something I've said above might be contentious or plain dumb, so let me hasten to add that I am a lawyer nyet and this piece of writing is not legal or financial hand holding ne advise in any way shape or form.
Let's get these 3 questions vetted and answered forthwith so we can speed up the corporate block chain adoption curve and move beyond the belt and braces (suspenders) stage to where issuance, preparation, marketing and implementation score real cost savings goals!
* Umlaut omitted