AMA Highlights — Morpheus Network
By Daniel Dal Bello, Director.
June 8, 2020–8 min read.
On Tuesday 2 June, we welcomed three members of the Morpheus Network (‘Morpheus’) leadership team into the Hillrise Group Telegram chat for an AMA. Our guests were Dan Weinberger (CEO), Noam Eppel (COO), and Vignesh Iyer (Blockchain Solutions & Evangelist).
We have been looking forward to hosting this AMA for some time. Enterprise-focused blockchain startups have enjoyed a significant spike in interest over the past several months. The open-source initiative ‘The Baseline Protocol’ announced in March, backed by EY, Consensys, Microsoft, and others has further supported a clear evolution toward refining enterprise blockchain capabilities.
Morpheus have created a supply chain automation middleware platform built to seamlessly integrate legacy and emerging technologies. There is undoubtedly an incredible opportunity for a SaaS platform to streamline and optimize global supply chain management using blockchain tech. Through their platform, Morpheus provide stakeholders with item visibility, secure end-to-end tracking, tracing, custody, and compliance.
Morpheus are associated with the Baseline Protocol, are members of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, and have recently entered into a working relationship with Canada’s FCL.
In this post, we have compiled key questions and answers from the event.
Daniel Dal Bello
Welcome to you all and thank you for being here today. Could you please introduce yourselves and give some brief insight into your individual backgrounds prior to Morpheus and especially prior to joining the blockchain-space?
Dan Weinberger
Hey guys, I’m the CEO of Morpheus.Network. Happy to be here. I’m also on the co-founders along with my good friend Noam Eppel.
I have been involved in supply chain for close to 2 decades and have handled a multitude of shipments for companies around the world from Canada (where I live), to the US, China, and all over Europe. I have experienced first-hand the inefficiencies of supply chains and I’m ultra-excited about what we’ve already accomplished with Morpheus.Network in the past few years leveraging emerging technologies like blockchain and IoT for real supply chains in the real world, but also about our future! Let’s do this!
Noam Eppel
Hey Hey! I’m Noam, based in Toronto, and one of the two co-founders of Morpheus.Network with Dan! Thanks for hosting us, excited to be here!
My background is on the technical side, with 20+ years as a full-stack developer working for all sorts of companies large and small. I was one of the first developers building commercial e-commerce solutions in Canada back in 1996. I’ve also done quite a bit of teaching at a technical college in Toronto — I taught Secure Web Development. I see supply chain as a perfect use case for blockchain technology!
Vignesh Iyer
I’m Vignesh, a Blockchain Evangelist with the Morpheus team based out of New York City. I’m a computer engineer with a deep specialization in IoT and AI with a focus on solving last-mile connectivity with web and mobile technologies.
Daniel Dal Bello
I’ve recently read about your relationship with Weihai Huadong Automation Co., a manufacturer based out of China that seems to fit perfectly as a case study for your platform: a manufacturing enterprise-facing scaling and growth issues lead by supply chain headaches.
What exactly have you been able to do for this company?
Dan Weinberger
We provide QR code geolocation functionality for [Weihai] Huadong. It provides visibility for our clients to see where their physical assets are located with a simple QR scan.
We are battle testing our technology all around the world and have successfully completed geolocation tracking in 6 continents. Huadong is a massive industrial manufacturer and physical tracking of their goods was a specific request of their client.
“We are battle testing our technology all around the world and have successfully completed geolocation tracking in 6 continents.”
We have many ongoing projects with geolocation which we can implement with a simple QR code scan anywhere in the world.
Daniel Dal Bello
Dan, I’ve heard you speak about masternodes in the past and how this isn’t a priority until you reach a bottleneck in transaction capacity. Can you give us an idea on where that bottleneck sits at the moment?
What kind of daily transaction numbers would push you toward that limit? There’s no doubt for me that your community would be eager to hear more about this.
Dan Weinberger
It would be disingenuous for us to say that masternodes themselves are a priority, however, onboarding clients to use the platform so that we eventually need masternodes to handle the increased volume IS a priority. This planning for the transactional limit based on network congestion was absolutely critical and having a solution in place allows us to continue with our day-to-day business of growing the company.
Vignesh Iyer
To add to this, with each company executing some amount of workflow our expectation is that each company will do around 7,500 transactions a day. To address this we have come up with a scalable sidechain architecture that helps to remove the congestion in the main network.
@Robin_Trade
By this you mean there is no real need for masternodes, due to the sidechain architecture?
Vignesh Iyer
We are actually using masternodes to scale up the sidechain architecture. With 7.5k transactions with one company, as the number of companies increases, masternodes becomes a viable solution and also ensure decentralization is brought into the ecosystem.
Daniel Dal Bello
You have a range of clients each with obviously differing needs. For example, Vitalcan seem to extract maximum value from the Morpheus platform by utilizing your solution in an end-to-end manner, supporting all of their key stakeholders from procuring raw materials to shipping finished goods. FCL on the other hand are live with just document handling at the moment (that’s not to say you aren’t working on more implementations).
From what I understand you have a dozen or so clients live with solutions on your platform. In general, do you find that clients get the most value in an end-to-end manner like Vitalcan, or in smaller isolated processes? For example, something like Weihai as you mentioned earlier with a specific need. Of course, the size of the organization would matter here.
Dan Weinberger
It’s very different for each client. Certain clients will implement a single functionality with the intention of implementing more systems as time goes on. This is road-mapped with the clients and scheduled properly with the team. Other projects such as the end-to-end transformation with Vitalcan, involve more complex functionality and fully automated workflows using truck arrangements and handling points across many different places in the supply chain.
There is a lot of room to grow with of course adding on new clients. With the clients that we’re working with right at this moment in the food and beverage industry, we are focusing on our document handling system for certification across many verticals in North America and across LATAM.
Other implementations include the generation of cross border documentation from Canada to the US which we’re very confident with. Those clearances were a part of our collaboration with Jim Maslowski and Customs Direct. Another implementation was leveraging our integration with small package providers to provide a back-end API to track handling points across all the provider platforms from a single point of contact. We love interesting projects, to say the least.
@crypto_freedom_35
Noam, can you talk about what you are currently working on with Baseline Protocol?
Noam Eppel
I’m actually super excited about Baseline! When I first heard about it I thought it was revolutionary and a game-changer. I got on a call with John Wolpert who is leading the Baseline effort to learn more. It is really important that people understand that Baseline is still very early in its development and the specification isn’t fully defined yet. With any technology, there are risks and rewards to being an early-adopter. Our approach is to do what we can to help move the Baseline Protocol specification forward — because we believe it will be tremendously valuable to our platform. Concurrently, we’re starting to work on a proof on the concept in association with another blockchain company to demonstrate exactly how Baseline can be leveraged in international shipments. 💪
“Our approach is to do what we can to help move the Baseline Protocol specification forward — because we believe it will be tremendously valuable to our platform.”
Daniel Dal Bello
Could you talk to us about what interoperability means for you as a platform provider and for your clients as users? How important is the flexibility that comes with this ability to evaluate and choose a blockchain based on your specific needs?
Vignesh Iyer
There are some processes that require intensive computing which something like Holochain provides, some processes like remittance works well with blockchains like Stellar and Ripple. With interoperability we actually want companies to leverage different blockchains for different processes in one platform — Morpheus Network.
shan
Hi Noam, just wondering since the FCL Co-Op announcement has any interest been shown directly to you guys by other large food supply companies around the globe?
Noam Eppel
Certainly shan, we’re quite active in the food security and agriculture space. With the logistics supply and demand challenges we’ve seen recently due to COVID-19, it has really put the spotlight on the absolute need of having greater control and visibility into your own supply chain. Companies are realizing this and seeking solutions. With our platform, we’re in a great position to help with these challenges.
We’re talking with food supply companies — and actively reaching out to more companies to start more conversations.
Scottcrypto
Dan, in a nutshell, what is the main benefit of tracking the food supply chain? Is it, spoilage, contamination, handling? It’s interesting to understand their main pain points, and can you elaborate on this in the context of beverages?
Dan Weinberger
Every company has their own pain points, Scott. For an example of one beverage company, their issue is supply chain documentation. They’re having huge delays just to get the documents submitted properly, meaning tonnes of operating expenses. This is completely different than needing a traceability solution, for example. You need to have these conversations to dig into their processes and find the pain points.
Daniel Dal Bello
On this topic of hires Dan, I have watched your conversation with new recruit Carl Wood on the Morpheus YouTube channel. Carl has joined the team in a business development role and brings a wealth of experience in the LATAM region. How did you become connected with Carl and what motivated you to approach him to join the team?
Second, is Carl’s role a full-time commitment? We note that he has been running his own boutique consulting firm for over a decade in Mexico.
Finally, can you give us any further insight today into the details of the Fortune 50 F&B company relationship?
Dan Weinberger
Carl has been killing it in the trenches mapping the processes for clients including the fortune 50 you mention. His experience lends itself perfectly to what we’re doing as a company, great guy too.
@YoYoYoMother
Can you explain how the 1% of the final transaction value is converted to MRPH, and following lockup what then happens to those MRPH?
Daniel Dal Bello
Great question, I’m sure many others are keen to understand the utility and flow of MRPH in the ecosystem, including how clients interact with it.
Dan Weinberger
We have extremely in-depth posts that we’ll be releasing very soon.
Vignesh Iyer
We are working on a detailed flow diagram that we should be finalizing and sharing soon.
Hillrise Group supports ambitious Web3 startups with early-stage venture capital and fundamental research.
Morpheus is a supply chain automation middleware platform built to seamlessly integrate emerging tech into outdated legacy systems.
Connect with Hillrise Group
https://hillrise.group
https://hillrisegroup.medium.com
https://twitter.com/hillrisegroup
