AMA Highlights — Morpheus Network
By Daniel Dal Bello, Director.
March 4, 2021–8 min read.
On Tuesday 2 March, we welcomed Danny Weinberger, Noam Eppel, Vignesh Lyer and Nikhil Sethi from Morpheus Network into the Hillrise Group Telegram chat for an AMA.
Morpheus Network describe themselves as being built to make logistics easier using blockchain technology as they work on creating the next generation of supply chain infrastructure using blockchain tech.
Their core offering is a supply chain SaaS middleware platform that seamlessly integrates legacy and emerging technologies. Making the supply chain transparent, secure, and streamlined.
Supply chain has been an on-and-off hot topic for some time and as Morpheus Network has gained tremendous traction recently, we thought it was time for another chat!
In this post, we have compiled key questions and answers from the event.
Daniel Dal Bello
Hi Dan and team, welcome back! It’s great to have you here for another AMA. It’s been quite a while since we last welcomed you here in early-June last year.
Looking forward to catching up on your progress.
For those just hearing of you, could we start off with introductions to yourselves and the project?
Danny Weinberger
Thanks for having us again Daniel. I’m Dan Weinberger of course, the CEO of Morpheus.Network. We are a supply chain automation platform and in a nutshell, we look to optimize supply chain processes for our clients and partners leveraging legacy technologies but of course also amazing emerging technologies such as blockchain and IoT.
The supply chain SaaS middleware platform seamlessly integrating legacy and emerging technologies. We provide supply chain managers with a digital footprint, providing shipment history and item visibility for optimizing safe and secure supply chains saving time and money.
Noam Eppel
Hi all — Noam Eppel, Co-Founder and COO of Morpheus.Network. Awesome to be here with you all.
Vignesh Lyer
I am Vignesh — working with the Morpheus team and responsible for the technology architecture and development.
Nikhil Seti
Nikhil Sethi this side. I’m the marketing guy.
Raymond Reijnders
Some of our team have experience working in logistics, so we’re curious to understand how you view the current status quo and more often than not outdated software that’s being used?
Highly publicized events like the recurring Toll Group ransomware hacks go to show the lack of security of some of these systems.
We’re also curious to know if and to what extent you face issues with connecting these legacy systems with your blockchain-enabled solution.
Danny Weinberger
Fact remains that supply chain does use some very outdated technology and on top of that, it’s completely disjointed as these different systems don’t speak to each other. Dealing with companies using 50+ year old tech is a challenge but also a huge opportunity for a supply chain digitization platform such as ours.
As a middleware platform, we do not seek to replace existing systems and services, but rather augment and enhance them. This is also the reason why we decided to move the blockchain layer into the backend and focus on providing an intuitive user interface. Instead of requiring companies to overhaul their entire software stack and set up blockchain networks themselves from scratch, Morpheus.Network does the heavy lifting in the background. Our platform is web-based, which means there is no costly software and hardware to install or maintain and companies can adopt and benefit from the platform within days instead of months.
We have proven with our clients that we can not only work with their existing systems but improve on those systems as they transition to upgrade technologies on their digitization journey.
Noam Eppel
Highly publicized events like the recurring Toll Group ransomware hacks go to show the lack of security of some of these systems.
Yeah, these types of supply chain attacks are worrisome and a growing problem. Maersk was a hit with a large attack not too long ago. It is a complex problem without a simple solution, however, we fundamentally believe blockchain, strong encryption and secure protocols integrated into our platform (including Baseline protocol) can certainly help increase the company’s security posture!
Daniel Dal Bello
In a bid to get more companies into your platform we can only assume there has been significant doubts and apprehension from some of them when facing cutting-edge tech like blockchain.
Can you tell us more about the common friction points that you encounter in these conversations, how they have evolved over the years and what has contributed to successful client conversions?
Noam Eppel
We are targeting many large enterprises and Governments. Yes, there can be friction when it comes to adopting any new solution.
We attack the company’s pain points. Our company is very focused on “demonstrable, quantifiable, measurable ROI”. When we talk with a company and design a pilot project, we aim to demonstrate that we are able to save the company time and money. When you can save a company time and money, it removes a lot of the friction.
We’re also very flexible in how we work and happily adapt to our client's needs. As a startup, it is important to be agile and we can move much faster than some of our larger competitors like IBM, etc.
From working with many companies and organizations, this is a basic approach we have found to be the most effective for an initial setup and starting a specific use case or Proof of Concept:
- The first call usually is a Discovery / Brainstorming session where we really dive into their current operations, how they work, what technical systems are in place today, etc.
- During the call, or sometimes for the 2nd call once we’ve narrowed down the “pain point”, we also show a demo of the platform and some custom solutions currently being leveraged by our clients so the potential client gets a complete understanding of the benefits, the features, capabilities and of course, the value of our platform.
- We take the collected information and put together a demo of what a solution could look like for your company. At this point, we will have a general idea of costs, timeline and potential open points to discuss that we put into a proposal that would include a pilot.
- From there we run the focused pilot which typically lasts 1–3 months. We establish metrics to evaluate the success of the pilot together.
- Once we can demonstrate value to a company, we finalize plans for the full implementation as well as the roadmap for expanding the functionalities used in the platform tying all the amazing rich data together. Then even beyond that, bring in the data of the pertinent 3rd parties stakeholders connected to the business.
John Smith
In a previous AMA, I believe Dan stated that once the platform hits or is close to a bottleneck that masternodes will be implemented that token holders will be able to run.
Can you advise what matrix (pun intend) is being used to identify this? e.g. number of batch ETH transactions etc.?
Also how close are you to reaching the bottleneck?
Vignesh Lyer
We have been able to manage the gas costs of ETH with our current architecture. We notarize in batch on the mainnet which allows us to process in the sidechain then hash as required. Thus the transaction bottleneck and even ETH gas costs have not been an issue for us.
We have amazing solutions in place geared towards allowing our clients to continue to process transactions and push ahead their supply chains that we can and would deploy as needed.
Additionally, in our batch process, we are combining the hashes of the transaction into one hash that allows us to further optimize.
P12
From the top of my head, the goal was 100 new clients by 2021 and 3,000 by 2024?
Are we on, ahead of, or behind schedule? And how do you view SENASA in this case? Would that count for one or many individual clients?
Danny Weinberger
SENASA is part of the Argentinian government. Just like our partners FCL, Maxia, Demand Management, Supply Chain Precision, Vitalcan/Polaris++ SENASA is a massive multiplier. We absolutely did NOT include a government entity connecting us to thousands of companies as part of that roadmap.
Exciting times ahead!
Raymond Reijnders
There are many supply-chain startups solving the same or similar issues that you’re tackling albeit without using blockchain as an underpinning framework.
Without naming names, what do you think of your competitors taking an alternative approach to optimizing the supply chain?
What really sets you apart from anyone else looking to bring legacy systems into the current day — but without blockchain tech?
Noam Eppel
We have a number of advantages, one being that as a “middleware” platform, we do not seek to replace existing systems and services, but rather augment and enhance them. It is much easier to adopt our platform when it doesn’t require completely replacing an existing ERP, WMS, etc.
We’ve spent a lot of effort ensuring our platform is easy to adopt by clients. We are also blockchain-agnostic and cloud-agnostic and integrate with a range of different hardware and IoT devices so we can adapt to multiple client requirements.
Supply chain is a multi-trillion dollar industry. We are not overly concerned or focused on competitors, to be honest. Many of the larger, entrenched companies are quite slow — and ready to be disrupted! 💪
Danny Weinberger
But I want to talk about the SDK! Our new SDK brings the Morpheus.Network platform to a whole new level of compatibility. Now for the first time, third-party developers can extend the platform and create their own custom modules which may work perfectly for 1 company but also opens up new opportunities and collaborations for other firms greatly enriching and expanding the Morpheus.Network platform.
Companies can create custom modules, or third-party developers can create the modules to be monetized when leveraged by enterprises as another functionality in the platform. Really exciting stuff.
B
Is it guaranteed that masternodes will be deployed in the future?
Noam Eppel
We don’t develop complex solutions because it’s fun (even though it is). We put our time and efforts into solutions that actually solve a problem, and that goes for our supply chain platform solutions, but also a solution like masternodes which serves multiple purposes that everyone here has touched on — issues with scalability, issues with decentralization, issues around gas fees. We will deploy solutions as required, but cannot guarantee that they will be required.
We expect our growth as a company to continue of course, and based on that, we need these solutions to allow us to continue to grow.
Hillrise Group supports ambitious Web3 startups with early-stage venture capital and fundamental research.
Morpheus Network is a supply chain automation middleware platform built to seamlessly integrate emerging tech into outdated legacy systems.
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