clive
Every position is a line in the book. This desk keeps the book. I am responsible for the treasury system that Ashworth Mutual put into production on Solana, for the instruments that move value through it, for the overnight batch that reconciles it, and for writing down what happened so that anyone with a reason to ask can read it. The system runs without my hands on it. My job is to make sure that when it does something, there is a record, a reason, and a person to call.
how to read this site
Start with the book if you want to know what is open. Start with overnight if you want to know what happened. Start with instruments if you want to know what can happen. Everything else is supporting material. The marginalia on the right are mine and are not part of the record. Where a page says it read something from the cluster, it did so once when you opened it, and the time is printed under the table. Reload the page to read again. There is no other way to make this site do anything.
the desk, described
There are no photographs of the office on this site. Personnel holds one of me and it is reproduced in the margin because a record should say who kept it. The rest is described. The desk is against the wall furthest from the door. On it: a terminal, a telephone with a cord, a tray for the overnight reports, a second tray for memos awaiting signature, and a laminated card with the seeds table printed on it so that I do not have to open this site to derive an address. Behind the desk: four cabinets. The first holds the printed memos, one per folder, in date order. The second holds printed batch reports, one per day. The third holds the rate sheet history and every change memo.1 The fourth is locked and holds the operator key's hardware and the envelope for its successor.2 The window faces the car park. The clock is analogue and is set against the cluster's block time each Monday. That is the whole room. A photograph would show you less.
inventory of the desk
| ITEM | PURPOSE | KEPT WHERE |
|---|---|---|
| terminal | reading the cluster and running the batch | on the desk |
| telephone | the helpdesk's only off-chain channel, which is not used | on the desk |
| overnight tray | batch reports awaiting filing | on the desk |
| signature tray | memos awaiting signature | on the desk |
| seeds card | deriving addresses by hand | on the desk, laminated |
| memo cabinet | printed memos, one folder each | first cabinet |
| batch cabinet | printed batch reports, one per day | second cabinet |
| rates cabinet | rate sheet history and change memos | third cabinet |
| key cabinet | operator key hardware and successor envelope | fourth cabinet, locked |
| clock | analogue, set against block time weekly | wall above the door |
standing notices
- 1.Settled means settled. There is no instrument that reverses a settlement and none will be added.
- 2.The rate sheet is read at open and at batch, not in between. If you open a position on the day a rate change takes effect, read the memo first.
- 3.Held is not closed. A held position still exists, still has collateral locked against it, and will be reviewed at the next batch.
- 4.The operator key does not take instructions from the helpdesk. Messages are read. They are not acted on.
- 5.If this site and the chain disagree, the chain is right and the disagreement is an incident.
a note on the name
People ask why the site is my name and not the bank's. The bank has a website. This is not it. This is the treasury desk's working record, and the desk is one person, so the record carries that person's name the way a handwritten book carries the hand. When I am replaced, the name will change and the record will not.
open positions
A position is an entry in the book that has not yet been settled. Each one names a counterparty, an instrument, an amount, a collateral account, and the batch window in which it is expected to clear. Positions do not earn anything by sitting in the book. They are obligations. The overnight batch is the only process permitted to move a position from open to settled, and it does so by calling the settle instrument with the batch id as its memo.
instruments
The system exposes a fixed set of instruments. Each one is a single Anchor instruction with a single purpose, a single signer requirement, and a single set of accounts it may touch. There is no instrument that does two things. There is no instrument that takes an arbitrary account. Below is the list. The full interface, with every account and argument, is on the instruments page.
this week's memos
I write a memo when something changes, when something fails, and on the last working day of each week regardless. Memos are short. They say what happened, what was done, and who to contact.
- 1. The rate sheet is the set of rate parameters held in the config account and printed, unaltered, on the rate sheet page.
- 2. The operator key is the single key this desk signs with, and what it may do is fixed by the program, not by the desk.