How to: Create and Grant Assets that have an expiration date that are extendable.

Question

Is it possible to create particular assets that can have an expiration date and will expire within a preset period and extended if requested and approved - call it a smart-asset if you will.

The question is a result of a token-scheme my team is creating using MultiChain.

Thank you so much for reading, looking forward to your replies!

Answer 1

There's no notion of asset expiration inside MultiChain itself. But can you explain what you would want asset expiration to mean? If you mean it cannot be transferred any more in MultiChain transactions, then you would need to look for your solution elsewhere. But if you just mean it no longer has value and cannot be redeemed, then this can easily be handled as the application level. You can use an 'open' asset to allow the original issuer to create further issuances that update its metadata, setting the new expiration data, but add no new units.

Comments

Thank you for your reply and yes let me clarify my question some more.

What I mean to achieve, is to be able to control/regulate a created asset using time (hence, expiration date) so it can auto-expire without need of an Application Level intervention (but yes, if needed, that's fine as well).

The scenario is for example to use native assets to represent a set of Tokens and each Token is a service agreement that Alice for example will sell to Bob whereby Alice will honour it afterwards, when Bob requests for it.

However since Bob might not use it immediately, keeping this Token operational will incur costs on our MultChain setup over time, so it will be necessary for Alice to pay us to extend the lifetime of her set of Tokens.

Regarding what you mean by 'open' assets let me try to elaborate on it just to make sure I understand it correctly :)

The created asset will carry Metadata of Dates to signify when it will expire and once past the expiration date, the application will seize to recognise this asset a a valid 'service token'. Then, by creating further issuances with no new units but new metadata carrying new dates - when Alice 'recharges' her account - we achieve the application level equivalent of assets with 'expiring' and 'extendable' lifetime.

Is my understanding correct?

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Yes, that's exactly the intention.