InfoCorp Foundation August Update
6th September 2018
Sentinel Chain is a project as well as a project structure comprising of InfoCorp Foundation, InfoCorp AgTech and InfoCorp Technologies. As Sentinel Chain is still in its early stage, we are innovating and experimenting on the go. Along with successes, mistakes are made and lessons are learnt.
My immediate objective is to steer to the entire project structure into an operational and effective self-governable state as set out in the whitepaper.
The purpose of this article is to provide an update, as well as answers, to some of the major questions before us.
Project Progress
The Sentinel Chain project has successfully met all previous milestones in accordance to the whitepaper. CrossPay network, which is the country-level private blockchain, is on schedule to be launched in Myanmar before the end of the year. We are also entering into the preparation phase for Sentinel Chain’s mainnet launch which is on target for Q1 2019 barring any unforeseen circumstances.
Our joint-pilot with the Myanmar government commenced on 16 May 2018, with signing of an MoU with the Ministry of Finance’ Myanmar Insurance (MI), and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation’s Livestock Breeding and Veterinary Department (LBVD). The pilot covers 3 regions and the key purpose is to carry out operational readiness; testing of CrossPay on the ground and more importantly, for the government authorities to ascertain the risk of infection to livestock with the RFID-tagging.
The joint pilot team consisted of 30 veterinary field officers from LVBD, and 9 insurance officers from MI. The pilot comprised of 4 phases — translation, localisation, adoption and field deployment. The pilot has been successfully completed and further details will be shared in due course. You may access our weekly progress updates offering a wealth of information here.
To understand the importance of CrossPay solving the financial inclusion problem, it is useful to watch this interview with one of our local pilot users. It was unexpected that our pilot has coincided with one of the largest flood disasters in Myanmar’s history. An entire plain of Irrawaddy was covered in the flood up to the horizon as shown in this video. The video highlighted the plight of farmers as a consequence of the flood. Besides the lost of human lives, a plain once used for cattle grazing was lost and farmers had to rely entirely on purchased livestock feeds. This requires financial support from both insurance and loans.
Although Myanmar has the largest cattle population in Southeast Asia (17 million), the cattle industry is still facing unmatched demand and is severely under-invested. CrossPay is needed for the monitoring of the cattle population as well as management of disease control and facilitating export of live cattle due to increased demand from China and Vietnam.
Foundation Treasury and SENC Circulating Supply
The total non-circulating supply of SENC is computed from the combination of balance in:
- SENC locked or not withdrawn in Vesting Smart Contract (0xB5dBd316Fa0368A99B3ca19597a5B22C70349b76). This contract is used to hold SENC belonging to founding investors, private sale and founding team. The balance in the contract is 56,742,507. Of this amount, 50 million belongs to the founding team and is locked down for 2.5 years withdrawal in equal proportions every 6 months, starting from Apr 2018. The remaining 6,742,507 is unlocked but not yet withdrawn by private sale investors. The smart contract code can be verified here.
- SENC Balance held in the Foundation Wallet (0x2c76e65d3b3e38602caa2fab56e0640d0182d8f8)
- SENC Balance held in AgTech Wallet (0xc937b6d447bc4bcb0ee7d2d40e4d4d92cf590f9c).
As of 4th September 2018, the total circulating SENC supply is 293,557,074(59%).
30% of SENC is set aside as Treasury and is managed by the Foundation. The combined supply of SENC with InfoCorp Foundation and InfoCorp AgTech adds up to 30% which is still in line with the amount stated in the whitepaper.
Treasury management is a function of the Foundation. As the plan for the use of treasury is still work in progress, the Foundation will withhold from accessing the SENC in the treasury until a plan on its use has been communicated. Further details will be released in the next update. We are in the process of establishing an internal treasury and market making management team led by experts with relevant capital market experience.
Foundation Governance Model
We will put in place a high-level governance model as soon as possible and communicate the details as they happen. To do this, we are establishing a Foundation Advisory Board, with the assistance of respectable industry veterans. We are honored to have Professor Pei Sai Fan as our first advisory committee member. Professor Pei Sai Fan used to be a director at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and taught courses on corporate governance in Singapore Management University. A compensation and election structure will be subsequently put in place to ensure fair compensation for foundation board members based on Key-Performance-Indicators (KPIs) to steer the Foundation in meeting its goals.
Sentinel Chain Ecosystem
The project that is currently in implementation by InfoCorp Tech has been progressing very well; in accordance to the road map laid down in the white paper. Alongside this, the role of the Foundation is to promote the ecosystem, as well as future viability and utility of the SENC token. Moving forward, the next step is to promote the Sentinel Chain model world-wide and enable partners to be brought onboard to create the Sentinel Chain Ecosystem. In order to achieve this, the InfoCorp Tech team is working on technical enhancements to its original Sentinel Chain design to incorporate a ERC20-ERC20 cross-chain bridge that will allow other ERC20 tokens to enter into the ecosystem. Aside from our partnership with POA Network, we will be announcing in due course other partners that will be involved in this collaboration. The Foundation will look into communicating a launch date for the testnet to be ready and invite partners to come onboard to trial the system. There are also plans to organise hackathons for innovative solution developers to come onboard to demonstrate how other solutions can be used; to tap on to our livestock-backed financial services platform through the use of SENC.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
The Foundation aims to create value and improve lives. We are the world’s first creator of a blockchain solution that enables use of livestock as collateral for loans, thus creating the means towards reducing poverty, and other development issues including malnutrition, for unbanked farmers in Asia.
Our solution addresses 7 of 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), all of which are important part of the social responsibility of corporates, individuals and governments. They are namely -
- Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (Using blockchain for solving the provenance of livestock and using the provenance to create collateral for loans; a unique business model.)
- Partnerships for the Goals (This is an ecosystem for like-minded stakeholders wishing to realize shared goals to a better world. Using blockchain to drive speed, scale, transparency and accountability, and bringing stakeholders such as livestock insurers, governments and financial institutions into the network.)
- No Poverty (Farmers’ livelihood is improved by being able to gain access to a new form of financing by proving their ownership to livestock asset.)
- Zero Hunger (Farmer having access to new financing can increase the supply of food through buying more cattle for milk of draft and paying for better quality feeds.)
- Good Health and Well-being (The increase in the quality of beef and milk products can result in better nutrition and overall good health.)
- Quality Education (Access to easier financing will mean that farmers can put their children through education rather than pull them out to ward.)
- Gender Equality (Financing to unbanked are usually done through the women of the household, empowering them to achieve gender equality.)
We will continue to seek out, and explore opportunities to invite, like-minded corporates and individuals keen to partner us to drive positive impact to mankind, at speed and scale.
Finally, I will be preparing an AMA with our token holders to address further questions. As there are several major announcements to be made in the coming weeks and some of the questions may be already addressed in the announcements, the AMA will therfore be scheduled for later part of this month.
Sincerely,
Roy Lai
About InfoCorp Foundation
InfoCorp Foundation Limited (IFL) is a Singapore-incorporated public company limited by guarantee, set up to provide affordable and secure financial services to the unbanked via the Sentinel Chain, a blockchain-based international marketplace for cross-border financial services and the world’s first platform to accept the use of livestock as collateral. Taking a unique approach to the last mile problem of financial inclusion, the Sentinel Chain model establishes livestock provenance through the creation of livestock insurance on blockchain — the registration of livestock provenance on blockchain provides the unbanked with a new opportunity: the real possibility of accepting livestock as ‘collateral’ for loans. Sentinel Chain is a project developed by InfoCorp Technologies.
About Sentinel Chain
Sentinel Chain is a blockchain-based international marketplace for cross-border financial services and the world’s first platform to accept the use of livestock as collateral. Taking a unique approach to the last mile problem of financial inclusion, the Sentinel Chain model establishes livestock provenance through the creation of livestock insurance on blockchain — the registration of livestock provenance on blockchain provides the unbanked with a new opportunity: the real possibility of accepting livestock as ‘collateral’ for loans. Sentinel Chain is a project by InfoCorp Technologies.
About InfoCorp Technologies
InfoCorp Technologies Pte. Ltd. is a fintech company that provides the infrastructure to accelerate financial inclusion to unbanked and underserved communities through the use of blockchain technology. It designs solutions for small bank consortiums in emerging countries to facilitate inter-bank transactions using distributed ledger technologies and provides consultancy services to clearing house and central banks on implementations and testing of real-time payment systems, and also to corporate clients on implementations and operations of distributed ledger technologies for production use. For more information:https://infocorp.io/
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