Centralized mediators are no more a requirement for making transactions and obtaining finances, after all, blockchain is here to serve with an upgraded level of transparency.
Introduction
Proper cash flow is one reason which can explain the need of project which is based on invoice financing.
While we all might not be that informative about what invoice financing is, the same is quite important to understand, after all invoice financing can be cited as defining term for assets based lending for products which permits corporations to get investment for their dawdling compensating accounts receivable.
Usually, as per what happens in the business world, a buyer is provided with a time span of 90 to 120 days to recompense for the goods or services they have received. However this functionality doesn’t allow the businessmen to invest the profit they have earned on the instant basis, which in return lessens the opportunity on some level.
Hive-Project is all about finding a way for the seller to get their funds faster and grab on to the prospects they find appropriate.
Selling Invoice in Exchange of Immediate Payment — Invoice Factoring
Hive-Project has come up with a system, where in services providers (or invoice holder) can sell their invoices to a factoring company, for immediate cash payment. In return for providing immediate cash to invoice seller, factoring company/invoice buyer earns the profit in form of interest rate collected from the invoice seller and gets to collect final payment from services or product buyer after the time span of 90 to 120 days.
Why Opt For This Form of Invoice Financing
· Cash flow is one of the most prominent reasons, companies seek for such services. Be it buying new machines, stocking in raw material for new projects, or paying salaries to their employees, it’s not always possible for a company or an organisation to wait for next 90–120 days until they receive their final payment. Hence invoice financing comes in handy, which assist businesses and origination in obtaining immediate funds and liquidity they need for continuous operations.
· As a matter of point, we also cannot overlook the fact that this form of cash levitation is much stress-free when compared to the old conventional ways, as the one is not applying for a loan rather they’ll be just selling their liquid assists.
Causes why most companies are not imitating factoring
· Time-consuming — This whole process is not as easy as it might seem, as a lot of manual work is involved in the same. For example, be it listing the clients who agree with the factoring of invoice, confirming if the good and services have been delivered or not, or conforming if the invoice submitted is creditworthy, all of these and more are from the list of task which is to be completed manually followed by a written and signed agreement.
· Costly — While we already agree with the fact that this process is time-consuming, we cannot avoid that the same makes this process costly as well, which in return stops small and even some bigger clients and organisations from utilizing factoring.
HIVE-Project is here to fill the gap
Currently established in British Virgin Island, with the use of Ethereum blockchain technology and smart contract, Hive-Project team has decided to allocate exclusive fingerprint to every invoice dispensed by tokenizing invoices and publish them on the blockchain. This process will assist businesses to automate their invoicing process and take advantage of factoring services.
Hive serves as a decentralized data room for invoices, which are then provided with a unique record. Once the same is done these invoices are then made available as a shared resource of liquidity for factoring and invoice financing. Also, businesses can take benefit of the cryptographically protected working of the Hive blockchain network to upload all of their financial certification. Admission to comprehensive financial data about a precise company or invoice can be approved only by the company itself or the receiver of the invoice. This enables real time auditing to be conducted, improves the credit scoring process, expedites credit approvals, etc.
With an end to end platform, Hive is here to assist SMEs with the easy access to short term financing, which is achieved by tokenizing and publishing each invoice in the blockchain.
Team
Hive Project core team has previously been involved in multiple big blockchain projects, such as Iconomi and Bitstamp.
While the most project teams are not very proficient in explaining their project in plain English, hive team is definitely putting in extra efforts to turn their project into a success. In fact, when asked from the team, we were told that “Hive Project is the World’s first crypto invoice financing platform. We’ve made a v117 second video, explaining what Hive Project does in plain English. You can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vw7Dk0z_TX0 “.
Jure Soklic — CO-Founder and CEO / Slovenia — true believer of the decentralized economy and with extensive experience in the international finance industry, Jure is handling the position of an executive and consultant in the organisation. Strong track record in the field of finance, consumer durables, and experience in digital marketing, retail, business development and e-commerce are few extra credits Jure holds in this bag.
Dejan Jovanovic — CO-Founder and CTO / Canada — Co founder of Hive-Project, Dejan hold more than 25 years’ experience in software engineering and leading large technology teams.
Oliver Muldoon — Finance Lead / United Kingdom — with invoice financing as one of many expertise Oliver experience is definitely assisting hive project in reaching its height. Oliver began his working from Bank of America’s legal department in London. In 2008 he took over the AVP position at the bank’s asset based lending division.
Domen Ursic — CMO / Slovenia — Domen is a public relations and marketing professional who specialises in strategic consulting. Prior to joining Hive, he worked as the ICONOMI ICO adviser and therefore brings extensive knowledge of the old and new economies to the team. Before his involvement in this successful ICO, Domen provided PR and marketing consultancy services to several domestic and international companies.
Jure Sobocan — Design Lead / Slovenia — Jure is a graphic and UX/UI designer with over 10 years of experience, who is currently focusing on blockchain technology information design, Jure helps companies like Bitstamp present their technology in visual form in order to make it understandable to a wider audience.
Stanimir Savov — Blockchain Lead / Bulgaria — Stanimir has 7 years of involvement in the US and Europe as a senior developer in the fin-tech, automotive, insurance and CPG industries. He was recently involved in the development of the loan application, lending flows and user profile verification process for BitLending Club, the Bitcoin crowd-lending platform.
Gal Jakic — Community Manager / Slovenia — An extreme adaptive athlete and 3x Paralympian in para Alpine skiing, applies the extreme dedication of professional sport to his career in web development. The owner and lead developer at We Wow Web, a highly rated web design and digital marketing agency, Gal is obsessive about helping businesses grow. Fascinated by crypto technology. Slightly OCD about customer service.
Tom Sperry — Investor/ USA — starting his career at Microsoft Corporation, as a founding member of the Games Division, Tom Sperry embraces the experience of handing critical positions and challenging situations. Co-founder and managing director of Rogue Venture Partners, a Portland, Oregon based venture capital fund. Tom Sperry has worked as CEO of Exit Games Inc. and Blade3D (Shanghai, China) and held senior management positions with HNC Software (Executive Director) and Looking Glass Studios (Director).
Prototype and/or Code
With three developers working on Hive Project Platform at the moment, the project has past the phase of concept proof and in the detailed design phase of technical implementation. As for testing, the team will make it available in early development stages. Also, team plans on expanding the product development roadmap, which they will regularly update on development and limited access to contributors to test the product in development. Their milestones predict first invoices to be Q1 of 2018.
We always ask if the idea is worth investing -
Well, we asked this straight from the team and get to know that “Hive Project is solving a real-world problem by utilizing blockchain technologies. 60% of SMEs are currently experiencing cash flow problems & a survey of 500 UK businesses under 1 million British Pounds in annual revenue, wait for invoice settlement for 72 days on average and the number is growing. Also, the classic invoice financing has been growing 14% annually since the 2008–2009 financial crisis. We’re now bringing all these benefits to small & medium businesses in an automated & affordable fashion”. Also, they further added that “We’re targeting a very specific population of SME owners, who have been yearning for an invoice financing solutions that would not involve a lot of paperwork, be fast, affordable & not taking time away from what they should be doing — running their business”. “Our go-to market strategy is simple — Hive Project will integrate into largest local ERP or accounting software providers for SMEs in the markets we’re targeting. That way we’re providing services of Hive Project Platform in an environment they know well”.
Breakdown of what the funds will go towards and how they are budgeted?
• First of all the funds raised during ICO will end up in multiple multi-sig cold wallets.
• Hive Project will use the raised funds for development of business & Hive Project platform.
• If the funds raised reach 2000 BTC, 500BTC gets funnelled into HVNX — Hive Project Invoice Financing Fund to fund the invoices of SMEs & help them reach liquidity.
Purpose of the token and what function or utility does it perform?
HVN token is ERC20 token standard compatible token based on Ethereum. It is the utility token of Hive Project Platform & is the payment currency with which payment of real-time credit scoring or financial data auditing services is performed. In simpler words, it is the fuel of Hive Project platform & certain features of the Hive Project Platform can only be paid in HVN.
Economic model behind the project –
Hive Project will create HVNX as Hive Project’s own invoice financing fund if the contributions exceed 2000 BTC. That will allow Hive to not only build the platform but start funding the invoices ourselves. HVNX will generate money & will enable Hive Project to enter peer-to-peer (P2P) financing stage faster. In the P2P stage, revenues for Hive Project will also be generated by services Hive Project will provide for people interested in investing in invoices.
Token Distribution Structure -
HVN is not a fixed price token, so the funds raised in ICO get divided across 500 000 000 HVN tokens. Hive Project Team remains in control of 25% of tokens so that the motivation for building a good business that fuels the HVN token growth & having its value rise is also ensured not just by internal motivating factors, but also the external. 75% of HVN tokens get divided proportionally between contributors.
Also, while we are talking about token distribution system, we must remembrance that HVN token issuance is not performed through a smart contract, but rather done manually, which means there will be no HVN-specific mining.
Plans for security –
Project security is one of the major concerns, not just for the investors but for those as well, who plan on using the services. Thence we made sure to ask what project core team has to say about the same. As per what we came to know, currently, every registered user on the Hive Project platform gets his own 2 addresses, one for BTC & one for ETH contributions. Before these get sent into a multi-sig cold wallet, they are creating a wallet for each user essentially, which they believe is a more safe way to raise money during the ICO stage. Also for those who believe in transparency, HVN token will be audited by a member of the advisory team, Tomislav Mucic, who has had extensive experience in blockchain technologies.
When asked for legal structure, we were told that “Our expansion plan is to go country-by-country, to develop a legal framework for each specific territory”. Also, to make sure investors are aware of these facts in advance, all of this and more has been clearly stated in terms and conditions section.
Community building — with more than 800 people on their Slack team, Hive-Project has been supported by more than 1400 contributors. In simpler words, it’s quite easy to say that if not highly they are definitely successful in building a community around their project idea. In fact to know more about their project or to stay updated with the latest you can even follow their medium channel — http://medium.com/HiveProject-net/
Our take on the project -
As we can make out from the above discussion, the fundamental participations of the company capital are the invoices that are issued or received. Once received, with the support of automatic ERP connector every invoice is tokenized and published on blockchain (distributed database) which then assist in creation and sharing of digital ledger without needing any central authority. Time stamping is a basic blockchain function that permanently registers on the block the time that a particular action took place.
Invoice verification — as we know this complete project is based on invoice, thence it’s crucial to make sure no fraud is done in factoring transaction, however, we believe that the team has made sure to cover that risk as well. As with the Hive blockchain application with ERP connectors allow computerization of all procedures involved in inspecting legitimacy of submitted invoices. History of succumbed invoices on public blockchain permits additional computerised valuation of legitimacy and related risk.
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MCAP Labs editorial team- info@mcaplabs.com
