Why do we need a financial web? It will come as news to nobody that people don’t make good use of their assets. And in fact, quite a few people have no clue what their assets are actually worth, or even – as is habitual in the post-Soviet world – have no clear idea what the word ‘asset’ actually means. Even the world of making payments – despite the existence of thousands of payment systems all over the world (and why do we need them all?) – is disastrously sloppy, if we compare it with the crisp efficiency the Internet handles the transfer of information. Dig just a little deeper, it turns out that transactions involving securities leave the average guy in the street bamboozled and out-of-pocket – and if the discussion moves on to real estate, the whole thing becomes a maze of red tape. Today, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies are seen by many today as the kind of ‘disruptive technologies’ which could upset the applecart. If we read the news headlines, we’re told that these processes will not only become simpler and cheaper, but also as straightforward as sending an email. That’s why just a few years ago here at Distributed Lab we began a mission to set up a financial web. Although it’s tricky to forecast the entire thing in detail, but we can reliably set out its main principles – what it has to do, and what it shouldn’t attempt to do.