[NEM Community Funding Proposal] — World’s First Decentralized Indoor Farm
NEM COMMUNITY FUND PROPOSAL
GreeOx: Growing Fresh Foods Without Borders
A Blockchain-Powered Indoor Farming Economy
One-page Summary
We request the sum of 5,000,000 XEM ($1,150,000) to be used to establish our decentralized indoor farming economy, the full details of which we present in this proposal. GreeOx has recently transitioned from ERC20 protocol to the NEM blockchain to ensure the future success of our distributed and decentralized farm. We are inviting all NEM members to participate and become fractional owners of our cutting-edge growing technology, designed to feed a world without borders — in any climate conditions.
Key Milestones (summary)
Phase 1 (160,000 XEM) — Business Formation
Phase 2 (800,000 XEM) — Minimum Viable Business Development
Phase 3 (1,520,000 XEM) — Minimum Viable Product Development
Phase 4 (1,520,000 XEM) — Minimum Viable Development and Governance
Phase 5 (1,000,000 XEM) — Launch GroBinn
Usage of Funds (USD)
Platform Development — — — — — — — — — — — — — $690,000
Conferences and Traveling — — — — — — — — — — $50,000
Conference promotion — — — — — — — — — — — — — $50,000
CoinmarketCap Ads (10 days) — — — — — — — — $90,000
Digital Ad Search (10 days) — — — — — — — — — — $50,000
Legal cost (Company establishment) — — — $70,000
Social media AMzix (Community) — — — — — $50,000
Exchange listing — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — $50,000
Cash reserves — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — $50,000
Total Costs — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — $1,150,000
Table of Contents
1. Executive Summary
2. Who Are We?
3. What Problem is GreeOx Solving?
4. How Will GreeOx Solve These Problems?
5. GreeOx Economy: The Future of Farming
6. Usage Case for Blockchain Technology
7. Outcomes for the NEM Community
8. Fund Disbursement
9. Business Model
10. Team
1. Executive Summary
Due to the magnitude for demand of fresh and safe foods in AgroTech, GreeOx is requesting 5,000,000 XEMs to secure NEM technology for its decentralized and distributed urban farming economy. Funding will be used for securitization of global farming units, installing supply chain traceability, and operations management for maximum transparency.
2. Who Are We?
GreeOx has attracted acclaim not only for its revolutionary indoor growing technology, but for its mission to reframe the age-old market of food, bringing forth clean, safe, and nutritional agronomics techniques that thrive in any hostile growing environment. By applying a proprietary advanced agricultural method, GreeOx is ready to introduce its decentralized platform for indoor farming.
The Founding Company has been operating for over four years in the capacity of Research and Development in all aspects of AgroTech. Crucially, GreeOx occupies and operates an in-house manufacturing container facility, providing a competitive advantage in the construction and servicing of farm development solutions. GreeOx aims to disrupt indoor farming operations and make the transition to a distributed global indoor farming economy.
3. What Problem is GreeOx Solving?
Agriculture and horticulture specialists will face some of the greatest challenges in the 21st century. They will need to assist in the supply of food and fibre products for a growing, increasingly-urbanized population that is expected to exceed 9.5 billion by 2050. The process of rural-to-urban migration places tremendous strain on high-density urban environments, and also their surrounding areas as agricultural output is bolstered.
In this urbanized future, the main challenge for the agriculture industry will be to supply safe produce needed for quality of life, while maintaining a sustainable environment. The land and resource-intensive practices of traditional agricultural systems result in costly (and unsafe) produce, depriving low and mid-income brackets access to fresh, nutritious food. This is a tremendous issue that is only set to worsen as populations urbanize, and water, electricity and other precious resources become more scarce. Conventional agricultural methods fail to meet the demands of the earth’s population, and a more advanced, environmentally-sound solution will be needed to effectively sustain this forecasted growth.
Hydroponic and greenhouse technology, aquaculture and aquaponics, organic and urban farming technologies are intensive plant-production systems that are all well-placed to meet the challenges ahead. Their current manifestations, while a step in the right direction, are unsustainable and in the future it will be necessary to develop alternative production systems that are more efficient in terms of water, energy and labour use.
Driving the challenges ahead are consumer and government pressures to produce safe, nutritious food in a way that is sustainable and does not harm the environment.
4. How Will GreeOx Solve These Problems?
GreeOx is building the first decentralized and distributed open farming economy to service the growing need for a truly traceable, affordable and sustainable fresh produce. Any individual will be able to participate in the distribution and fractional ownership of GreeOx systems, processes and output. In turn, all participants of the ecosystem will be rewarded and incentivized for contribution- be it via human resources, technological development or enhancement, land / building contribution, or investment into a GreeOx farm.
At the core of this economy is the GroBinn container farm, GreeOx’s tested and established technological solution, to provide year-round sustenance to any location in the world- from the most populous urban environments, to remote latitudinal areas suffering from extreme climatic conditions. Each GroBinn container farm take up a concise 40 x 9 x 8.5 feet surface area, yet have an annual yield equivalent to 1.5–2 acres’ worth of produce.
All vegetables are grown indoors without pesticides or contaminants, allowing for high yields of any leafy green or fruit, anywhere in the world. Grobinn containers are mobile, modular, stackable, and highly automated. GroBinn containers allow for rapid deployment of indoor farms and its pre-built modular growing system can be shipped and installed quickly in any existing warehouse or building to support consumers demand for quality food. Critically, the GreeOx solution is environmentally-sound, resulting in a high-output agricultural economy requiring negligible amounts of water, electricity, and other resources.
GreeOx is building tomorrow’s agricultural economy, encouraging and facilitating access to fresh produce for all, regardless of geolocation or income- enabling all urban (and rural) dwellers to have uninhibited access to “farm-to-table” produce.
GreeOx truly believes fresh, quality food should be available to all, and the global community deserves a share in the profits of distributed farming.
5. GreeOx Economy: The Future of Farming
The GreeOx Economy decentralizes the production of quality produce, allowing any community to have autonomy as they contribute and consume in a truly localized way.
Revenue Distribution — The NEM protocol enables all participants to be a part of the farming economy; truly rewarding farmers for their contribution to maintain and operate the distributed farm which includes harvesting and packaging. Land or building owners are rewarded by contributing real assets to the community farm operations. GreeOx token holders, as defined in the business model (B2C, B2B, and B2I) carry the right to receive monthly dividends from eligible harvests profits.
Payments are calculated with sales of container orders and crop production yields as a part of revenue, but not as profits, therefore before funds can be included into the dividend payout pool, the costs of maintenance, electricity, regional farmer wages, etc. must be deducted. The tokenization ecosystem is a turn-key process that ensures transparencies of calculations in costs and revenues, which will be audited from a Big 4 Firm to ensure mirroring of the profits paid out to token holders match accordingly. The timing of the dividend payouts will be planned to ensure there are minimum thresholds set in as triggers to protect the payout, so it does not become consumed by transaction charges (“gas fees”) and if too low, will continue accruing until the fees are a smaller percentage than the payout. The strategy is to ensure the first token holders receive their initial “healthy” payments, generating an awareness to attract more investors to the ICO GreeOx manufactures additional GroBinns and produce more crops, where future payment will be more frequent as the operations scale. The end goal is to provide visibility to the performance and production yield of GroBinns through a token holder’s dashboard with features in reports rolled after ICO activities conclude. GreeOx’s real-time UI platform provides interactive visibility to incentivize the token owners to hold because once the tokens are sold, the dividends payments will route to the new owner’s wallet, generating a demand for circulation. and hence raising the value as a dual prong initiative.
Human Resource Contribution — The farming economy has many human resource requirements, considering the many roles and responsibilities needed to run farm operations. An independent non-profit organization will be developed to support, promote, and educate urban farming communities across the globe to operate the world’s first distributed — autonomous indoor farms.
Traceability — Track, identify, and trace the entire growing process starting with the nutrient intake, cultivation process, identity and certification, location and inventory management. In a world where every business has its own “book” for record keeping, GreeOx aims to put every transaction onto one distributed ledger to open up transparency along the full food chain.
Farm Development and Operating Costs — The challenges to allocate funding for farm development and location distribution — will all depend on the token holders locations, market demands and competitiveness, and potential high-return on investment. Farm operations and production costs are pre-determined during farm-site preparation and each unique condition (labour, water, and electricity cost) will be considered to the overall costs within ecosystem. Modular farm development and manufacturing material costs are facilitated on the public ledger to provide full transparency and uniquely offer a truly decentralized farming ecosystem.
6. Usage Case for Blockchain Technology
Smart Asset Contracts & Blockchain Technology
The whole ecosystem will rely on blockchain technology to make the bridge between real world operations and our virtual decentralized management system. GreeOx will have 3 core usages for NEM’s blockchain technology:
Global Ownership of Farming Units
- A smart contract is defined for each container with the purpose to secure and certify the ownership of a container with Mosaics serving as the backbone to NEM platform.
- Each container will have different “token capacity” that vary according to its building price for its location.
- Example: a container cost (03/15/2018), $50,000 USD, the token worth 1 usd, the smart contract associated to the container will be able to receive and hold a maximum of 50k tokens.
- Tokens funds placed on a container, are blocked, until a property transfer is decided between the owner and third parties. (other mechanism of unblock can be defined)
- A container has only 1 unique smart contract, that will be the “signature” used in every operation transaction- this will allow PnL and traceability
The smart contract details are defined through GreeOx platform, (voted by the community). A mini “ICO” is made after each decision of container creation.
Real World Operation Monitoring
- In order to define the PnL of a container, its cost and revenues have to be tracked and recorded on the blockchain. Costs are mainly billable in FIAT so as to ensure correct transparency, all invoices will be “apostilled” (notarized) on the blockchain complemented by a digital copy of documents stored on a cloud server.
- IoT devices will be used to monitor basic needs of a container:
■ . sensors for water consumption and environment variables (humidity, temperature, etc.)
■ sensors for electricity consumption
■ tagging of plants and nutrients supply
Human Workforce Management
- GreeOx is not 100% automated as of yet. Therefore, any community contributor can register on GreeOx platform as a service provider. The individual will then be assigned a unique Signature as “WorkForce” (blockchain address).
- The WorkForce Signature will be used to identify their activities related to a container, and reward them in tokens for their efforts.
- Entry in and out of a container: Tracked via scanning a QR code
- Growing/planting/harvesting: Every action will have a specific token reward granted after the operator provides a “proof of work”.
- The proof of work: Tracked with a combination of IoT/Hardware and AI
Supply Chain Traceability
- GreeOx guarantees traceability and transparency from seed to plate, certified for consumers via the GreeOx platform.
- During plantation, each batch of seeds will have its initial blockchain history secured by the operator using a connected device.
- The batch number, type, origin, planting date, allocated container and growing rack will be its recorded genesis.
- AI technology will be used to monitor and detect which racks are almost ready to harvest, making a robust harvesting schedule that is available to the community of operators
- Immediately after harvest, the operator associates each consumer package (box/jar/bag) with one or multiple rack numbers.
- Finally, upon entering the delivery process, QR scanning at each respective stage of transportation will ensure detailed the product’s path-tracking until it arrives in the consumer’s hand.
7. Outcomes for the NEM Community:
- Exposure of NEM protocol in AgriTech and Indoor Farming Space — The combination of these three technologies will profoundly disrupt the agriculture and supply chain industries. GreeOx will increase exposure for NEM blockchain tremendously through an already popular indoor farming space. GreeOx will upload its source code onto a public git repository to allow for review as an open source platform so others may implement on top of it as an open-network ecosystem.
- Fractional Farm Ownership — GreeOx tokens will represent fractional ownership of GroBinn indoor farms located around the globe — in any climate conditions. It is no small feat to own a cutting-edge automated farm to provide real food to the world, so this is an opportunity for NEM members to be the first to own distributed and decentralized farms. This would be accomplished through NEM’s algorithm, Proof of Importance (POI) where it provides higher priority to users and facilitates in the reputation of the users.
- On-boarding Institutional and Corporate Users — Grobinn will be placed amongst resorts and corporate users, to enhance the usage of Greeox Tokens on a large scale as these users fulfill their day-to-day food requirements. As an API based platform, compatibility is key to integrating with others, allowing for GreeOx to build on our own blockchain, linked to NEM’s parent chain.
- Unlock strategic partnership — The biggest advantage for this project is to unite and encourage its network of business partners to collaborate on the NEM platform and its community. Our community members, partners, and distributed farms will always include NEM as our operating platform. The principle core of GreeOx’s platform derives from forming partnerships with various organization, which is an intrinsic value different from other blockchain related initiatives.
- Increased visibility of the NEM blockchain — All GreeOx container farms will display “Powered by NEM”. Every farm location will enable NEM to be displayed on all of its signage and marketing materials. As a “green” company, modeling after the same mission, GreeOx will employ Ny and rewards participation within the community in mind. The message will address security with NEM’s eco-friendly consensus algorithm, Proof of Importance that was developed with usage of low energEM’s Mijin v.2 as the most secured smart contract framework available on the blockchain.
- Increased transaction of GROX — As a permissioned blockchain network, the requirement with efficient processing in the high numbers of transactions, individuals and corporate token holders are able to gain revenue/profits in terms of token deposits. With GreeOX’s distributed system framework, it is important to understand why data driven centric interaction amongst all participants (enterprise, non-profits, commercial, or corporate) can be verifiable as a business automation process between stakeholders. The control layer will be built into the blockchain nodes where certain participants, hence GreeOx Foundation may restrict who may be active in the consensus mechanism of the network with appointment authority to validate blocks of transactions. By limiting what the network can manage, the computational effort is greatly enhanced. The usefulness is realy within the storage of data within GreeOx and partner companies on the farming chain. Fiat currencies are accepted and transactions will utilize GROX . The increase in transaction in growth cycle and user interaction will contribute value back to the NEM community and blockchain.
- Indoor farming case study for NEM integration — The partnership and integration with GreeOx will unlock other opportunities for NEM. By employing NEM’s technology ProximaX that allows for GreeOx to quickly deploy the use of decentralized app, the integration can quickly and objectively be measured.
8. Fund Disbursement
GreeOx is requesting 5,000,000 XEMs ($1,150,000 USD minus) to be used as follows, with the accompanying milestones. The current rate is 1XEM = $0.23USD (Apr 4, 2018)
Phase 1
Business Formation (160,000 XEM / 36,800 USD)
● Market Research and Preparation
● Company structure and formation of Foundation (non-profit)
Phase 2
Minimum Viable Business Development and Launching (800,000 XEM / 184,000 USD)
Implement NEM blockchain integration (phase 1)
● Use Case Report
○ Devise inventory use cases to address business challenges
○ Assess and engage relevant NEM implementations
○ Prioritize usage cases and detail NEM’s unique proposition for GreeOx
Phase 3
Minimum Viable Product Development and Launching (1,520,000 XEM / 350,000 USD)
● Proof of Concept ($350,000 / 1,520,000 XEM)
○ Define and plan GreeOx minimum viable ecosystem
○ Develop technical and functional architecture
○ Build and test POC iteratively
○ Integration of Smart IoT and AI technology
○ Review
Phase 4
Minimum Viable Development and Governance (1,520,000 XEM / 350,000 USD)
● Scale ($350,000 / 1,520,000 XEM)
○ Develop governance with operating models
○ Expand MVE and partner with consortiums
○ Pilot NEM GreeOx solution into live production
○ Design roll-out strategy and integrate with legacy GreeOx
○ Roll out technology stack for community API
Phase 5 (1,000,000XEM / $230,000 USD)
● Launch Grobinn NEM blockchain integration
● Institutionalize Infrastructure- Administration, Marketing, PR
Usage of Funds (USD)
Platform Development — — — — — — — — — — — — — $690,000
Conferences and Traveling — — — — — — — — — -$50,000
Conference promotion — — — — — — — — — — — — $50,000
CoinmarketCap Ads (10 days) — — — — — — — $90,000
Digital Ad Search (10 days) — — — — — — — — — $50,000
Legal cost (Company establishment) — $70,000
Social media AMzix (Community) — — — — -$50,000
Exchange listing — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -$50,000
Cash reserves — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — $50,000
Total Costs — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — $1,150,000
9. Business Model
GreeOx has an innovative revenue model and turn-key system to use Greeox tokens (GROX). Crypto-investors from around the globe will buy into fractional ownership of Grobinns, which GreeOx will manufacture and distribute using the support of Greeox Non-Profit Foundation. Grobinn is the foundation of the ecosystem, whereby all parties involved will exchange tokens for produce. The token and farming pools are powered and managed by GreeOx community, whereas the individual pools are solely for the single token holder.
Business to Consumer (B2C) — Token Pool
Location-Based — A fractional ownership program is implemented whereby owners are able to pick up fresh produce at specific location as fractional owners. GreeOx will position Grobinns close to owners for easy access and convenience. GROXs are utilized in exchange of produce in Grobinn’s productions by visiting SideFresh.com 2
Business to Business (B2B) — Farming Pool
Ownerships are available to be distributed to resorts, hotels, groceries, schools, government offices, restaurants, and corporations. Businesses will use GROXs in exchange for produce daily.
Business to Investor (B2I) — Farming Pool
Partners Operations (PO) where an investor or investment fund acquires the growing system and contracts GreeOx Community to run the operation. Revenue shares of 35% of the earnings will be distributed to token holders.
Business to Ownership (B2O) — Individual Pool
GreeOx provides modular farming technology-as-a-solution to individual farmers, schools, corporations, restaurants, and groceries interested in owning a complete growing system without participating in the farming pool. 100% of net profits are distributed to token holders.
10. Team
H. John Tran — Founder/Chief Executive Officer
As a senior-level, results-driven executive with substantial expertise in the Financial Services arena, John Tran has a proven record of hiring and directing top-performing teams, managing billion-dollar portfolios, and growing highly successful ventures. With a vast reservoir of industry knowledge, he is quick to offer advice to startups and turnaround companies. Recognized for his positive attitude and business- building abilities, John is a creative thinker who continually reevaluates practices and inspires others toward excellence with an absolute commitment to collaboration and flexibility. He has spent the last 7 years advocating real food initiatives to urban communities.
Loup S. Rouan — Chief Information Officer
Loup is an early adopter in blockchain and cryptocurrency, having mined his first Bitcoin in 2010. Loup has over 10 years of experience in system development and management.
Previously, Loup manages the group information system of a global company and involved in the IBM AI XPrize to reduce chemicals in agriculture. Loup’s background is strongly aligned with the vision of GreeOx and the future of urban farming.
Dr. Tai Nguyen — Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Tai Nguyen founded and ran a manufacturing and fabrication company in Ho Chi Minh City that concentrates in industrial machinery and automation. He is a seasoned entrepreneur who has been a founder and active member of various technology and manufacturing start-ups in both the Bay Area and Vietnam in the last 2 decades, including semiconductor equipment and processes, fuel cell, storage devices, automobile, and solar energy.
Previously, Dr Nguyen was a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, USA. He received all degrees from the University of California at Berkeley. He currently holds 24 U.S. patents in the areas of semiconductor equipment and processes, electric/hybrid vehicles, and prefabricated structures.
Samarjit Rajkumar — Chief Marketing Officer
Samarjit (Samar) belongs to the neo-entrepreneurial crop of Indian business leaders, having demonstrated remarkable power play in the marketing and media industry across multiple markets. 2 decades of experience saw him managed Agency profitable growth across leading markets — China (7 yrs), India (5 yrs) and the rapidly-growing SEA (2 + yrs).
Skillful in generating new product and business ideas, providing strategic direction and different ways of doing everyday tasks with ease. In the new AdTech economy, he see himself as a builder that converts ideas to reality, thrives in rapidly-changing environments and founded MHouse — conceived to address the future of connected consumers through AI driven Marketing & Media Solutions. His most recent Corporate assignment was with DatVietVAC Group as Media COO.
Leo Chris Lu — Blockchain/Crypto Strategist
Leo possesses 20+ years of business and technology experience as a strategic and executive management officer. The knowledge he has contributed to industry peers includes expertise leading start-ups, SMBs with $750M in sales revenue, to Fortune 500 companies. Leo has been part of prolific organizations such as IBM, Franklin Templeton, DHL, and EarthLink. Leo was part of a pioneering SaaS company that disrupted the market landscape through their patented development of application virtualization and streaming technologies. During his tenure, he architected and led global teams of engineers to displace the traditional software application marketplace.
In his capacity, Leo is responsible for securing large-scale business opportunities both nationally and globally. He specializes in blockchain technology and business migration strategy which naturally aligns with GreeOx to identify opportunities, address critical challenges, and transform the organization. Focusing on Business Intelligence, Analytics, and Process Innovation in building out the next generation distributed ledger platform, he will offer a wide range of development services to properly define the whitepaper. In his off-time, Leo is an active community leader with Rotary International, LA5 and a former Scout. Leo holds a BSc in Information Technology — Media Visual Communication, Masters in Business Administration and PhD candidate in Computation Science.
Kimble Ngo — BlockChain Advisor
Kimble is a blockchain expert and advisor. He has worked with a variety of blockchain firms in the areas of strategy, tokenization, compliance, and marketing. He has extensive experience in Investment Banking, specifically around KYC and Compliance. He has previously managed multi-million dollar businesses and has worked on projects for Samsung, Pepsi, and Nestle. He is also a well-known personality through his hosting Startup events in Vietnam and Singapore, including SharkTank and Echelon. He also has also hosted a variety of blockchain events including Vietnam Blockchain Week.
Tien Le — Horticulturist
Tien has an age-old passion for hydroponics. She began working in the agriculture sector developing and designing hydroponic planting systems, development of new crops, control of plant diseases, and harvest technology. Tien’s mission in high tech agriculture is to contribute her time and energy using science to change old, outdated farming methodology.
Why Greeox? Our practical vision will modernize agriculture, creating a sustainable, environmentally-sound future of food supply.