User Manual for the Generic Insurance Framework

Terminology

Below, you will find a glossary of the technical terms used in this document.

Actor.

Any participant of the DIP that uses the ecosystem to perform an activity on it (e.g., a product, a product owner, an oracle owner, the instance operator, etc.).

Application.

Data applied by a customer requesting an insurance policy. An application is the predecessor of a policy. Not to be confused with software application; in our context we avoid the term “application” in this sense.

Claim.

Data related to an insurance claim, which requires approval.

Decentralized Insurance Platform (DIP).

An ecosystem supported by the DIP Foundation that unites product builders, risk pool keepers, resellers, oracle providers, claim adjusters, relayers, and underwriters.

Decentralized Insurance Protocol (DIP Protocol).

A set of standards, rules, templates and definitions which define the interaction of participants in the ecosystem.

Generic Insurance Framework (GIF).

A combined codebase, which includes smart contracts and utility services (core smart contracts and microservices) provided by the DIP Foundation and partners. The codebase can be extended by product-specific smart contracts and microservices created by product builders. Using this framework, product builders can develop full-featured DApps.

GIF instance. A deployed set of core smart contracts, operated by an instance operator, in most cases together with an appropriate set of utility services. A GIF instance is essentially an “Insurance as a Service (IaaS)”.

Instance operator. An Ethereum account which operates an instance of the GIF. An instance operator can be a decentralized organization (DAO) or a single account owned by some legal entity.

Metadata.

A shared object between all the objects of a particular policy flow.

Oracle.

A service used to provide information to smart contracts from external resources, confirm certain events, and deliver particular data to a product.

Oracle owner.

An Ethereum account registered on the DIP with a set of permissions for creating oracles and oracle types and performing operations on them.

Oracle type.

A type of request to an oracle containing attributes that describe a request and respond to it. Oracles join an oracle type.

Payout.

Data related to the expected and actual payout for a claim.

Policy.

Technical representation of the legal agreement between a policy buyer and a carrier.

Policy flow.

A core smart contract that represents a workflow of insurance policy life cycle, involving such steps as application underwriting, risk assessment, claim review, and payouts.

Policy token.

A ERC1521 token (extension of a ERC 721 NFT Token), which represents a policy as a set of particular fields.

Product.

A registered smart contract with permissions to create and manage policy flows.

Product owner.

An Ethereum account registered on the GIF with a set of permissions allowing to create and manage product contracts and oracle types.