From standard to settlement: Running ACTUS debt contracts on the Algorand Virtual Machine

How the Debt Algorand Standard Application (D-ASA) - awarded 2nd place in the global ACTUS Competition 2026 - turns the financial industry’s contract standard into machine-readable and executable, tokenized debt instruments, and why that should change how banks, payment agents, and transfer agents look at the AVM. Debt is one of the largest asset classes on the planet. And every debt instrument - every bond, loan, mortgage, and term deposit - is, at its core, a deterministic promise for the exchange of future cashflows: these amounts, on these dates, to these parties, under these conventions.