What the FAQ?! SHIPCHAIN

Everything you wanted to know… and more! about Shipchain, an open-source and public blockchain about to transform the logistics industry.

Disclaimer: Please always #DYOR and have a critical mind. This article’s author is not affiliated to Shipchain Inc. in any way but owns SHIP tokens. Make sure you are clear on differences between securities (which make their owners earn dividends reflecting companies’ profits) and utility tokens (whose value would increase due to demand exceeding supply). Do your own risk-assessment!

What is SHIPCHAIN and which problems does it intend to solve?

🧩Nothing better than short videos to answer this question:

🧩In three words: “Shipchain provides Trust” (https://blog.shipchain.io/what-does-shipchain-do/)
🧩New to crypto? Or not clear on the logistics use-case? Take a look at this article: Shipchain for Dummies — Medium article (https://medium.com/@shipmateFRnl/shipchain-for-newbies-part-1-introduce-trust-in-logistics-81364da3d442)

What is the purpose of the SHIP utility token?

🔗 The SHIP token powers and secure a public dPoS blockchain based on the SDK developed by Loom, a layer 2 solution. It is enterprise-ready, fast enough to cope with a high supply-chain related throughput and inter-operates with Ethereum, Binance Chain and Tron.
🔗 In other words? SHIP is to the Shipchain Network what ETH is to the Ethereum network.

But why do the Shipchain dApps need a sidechain?

🔗 Ethereum in its current state (1.0) got clogged by a fairly reasonable peak of interest in CryptoKitties. Let alone concerns from the industry on sensitive data storage and privacy, the prospect of tracking on Ethereum hundreds of thousands of shipments with a live GPS localisation every 5 mn for each of them isn’t quite encouraging…
🔗 This is where the Shipchain Network and the SHIP token comes into play: to address scalability without compromising on decentralization and take into account enterprise requirements. Call it Layer 2 or independent blockchain with built-in interoperability (sounds great doesn’t it?), that’s what the SHIP token is all about.
To deep-dive on these challenges, take a look at this great article from the former Shipchain CTO who shaped in 2018 and 2019 the dapps and the network to what they are now.
https://medium.com/loom-network/shepherding-the-blockchain-ecosystem-with-industry-chains-24596a2be980

What is Loom?

⚙️ The Shipchain network is a soft fork of Loom, a dPoS blockchain:
https://medium.com/loom-network/understanding-blockchain-fundamentals-part-3-delegated-proof-of-stake-b385a6b92ef
⚙️ Spend time on Loom’s blog post to fine tune your knowledge about blockchains interoperability:
https://medium.com/loom-network/5-misconceptions-about-loom-network-that-need-to-die-%EF%B8%8F-2c6eba1f657d

Did you say dPoS? Does it mean I can stake SHIP and receive rewards?

💵 Yes! Since the Shipchain network is based on dPoS consensus, SHIP belongs to the #DEFI movement and can generate a passive income to its holders, up to 20% YoY with the 1 year lock-up period!
💵 By staking SHIP via the Shipchain dashboard (direct delegation), token holders effectively vote for one or more validator nodes (max 51), in charge of running the blockchain, that are deemed the most reliable, thus contribute to network security.
💵 Here is a short preview of the staking/delegation procedure on the sidechain:

💵 You can stake here: http://network.shipchain.io/
💵 Here is the official announcement: https://blog.shipchain.io/announcing-the-launch-of-shipchain-mainnet/
💵 These articles will allow you to go deeper on these concepts:
https://medium.com/loom-network/plasmachain-validator-staking-economics-part-1-e816d5825849
https://loomx.io/token/ or http://network.shipchain.io/en/faq
https://blog.shipchain.io/shipchain-mainnet-launch-information/

What are SHIP’s token economics?

📦 Tokenomics of SHIP, native token of the Shipchain sidechain, currently based on the Loom SDK, have been covered in these 2 Medium articles.
📦 https://medium.com/shipchain-un-official-community/shipchain-for-dummies-part-2-token-economics-governance-1-2-39ba6f688c02
📦 https://medium.com/shipchain-un-official-community/shipchain-for-dummies-part-2-token-economics-governance-2-2-cf1616a4f8dc

Where can I buy the SHIP token?

🚀 You can find SHIP/ETH pairs on Uniswap, IDEX, hitBTC and Bilaxy.
- https://uniswap.exchange/swap (scroll down for more instructions)
- https://idex.market/eth/ship
- https://hitbtc.com/SHIP-to-ETH
- https://bilaxy.com/trade/SHIP_ETH (although we believe there is a wash trading bot on these exchanges)

How can I trade on Uniswap v2?

🚀 It is also possible to manually enter the SHIP contract address below when pressing “select a token” on this website:
https://uniswap.exchange/swap
🚀 SHIP Contract address:
0xe25b0bba01dc5630312b6a21927e578061a13f55
🚀 Follow instructions here for more information on how to use Uniswap:
https://tokenmint.io/blog/how-to-list-your-custom-erc20-token-to-uniswap.html

When is the Mainnet due to launch?

✈️ Mainnet is live since Friday, July 31, at 2:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, (1800 UTC / ZULU, 1596218400 UNIX time)!! https://blog.shipchain.io/announcing-the-launch-of-shipchain-mainnet/
✈️ Build your own node: https://docs.shipchain.io/docs/validatorGuide.html
✈️ Come and ask any technical questions to Shipchain devs and Validator nodes operators: https://gitter.im/ShipChain/TestNetwork

Is there a Testnet?

🛠 The Shipchain network went through 3 phases of Testnet in 2019 and 2020, Alpha, Beta and Gamma, before going live. The latest Testnet (Gamma) successfully launched in March 2020 and is still available for test purposes.
https://shipchain-testnet-gamma.network.shipchain.io/
🛠 Example of customized node monitoring dashboard developed during Testnet phase by one of the validators:
https://t.me/shipchainunofficial/15867

Why was the Mainnet delayed from March 2020 to July 2020?

🧩 LOOM’s leadership has changed earlier this year. 2 co-founders out 3 have now left the team to pursue new endeavors. Their former CTO has taken over and took the difficult task to pivot Loom to a more profitable business model.
🧩 As a result, it was feared that LOOM may drastically reduce their development of Basechain’s open source code and its SDK and focus on private development from now on.
🧩 The main consequence of this pivot was that Shipchain Inc. would have to under-take internally more development responsibility than initially planned and/or reach a financial agreement with Loom (last couple of years development saw the following split of responsibility: Shipchain Inc = the web and mobile dApps, Loom = the underlying blockchain technology, Loom+Shipchain free of charge collaboration = integration of the 2 together).
🧩 In this context, it was crucial and logical for Shipchain Inc. and its community of validators to pause the launch of the mainnet and re-evaluate all alternative options, to ensure the right choice was made, for all time frames, for their own dapps scaling up-related needs, and for the community of token holders and validators.
🧩 2 alternative platforms came up, Matic and Cosmos, which were reviewed taking into account criteria such as mainnet timings, budget and development skills, scalability vs decentralization and token economics.
🧩 Pros and cons were reviewed and pursuing the roadmap with LOOM was confirmed after notably listing a few temporary showstoppers with these alternatives: 2 of Cosmos’s key modules (Ethermint and IBC), meant to achieve 2 key features already implemented in Loom (full EVM compatibility and Interoperability with multiple public blockchains) are not expected to be live and audited before end of Q4 and Matic is still a relatively young platform that launched its own mainnet for the first time in May 2020.
🧩 While launching in July 2020 with Loom is now confirmed, the door stays open for a transition to a pure PoS network in the future should this be judged beneficial for the network by Shipchain’s team, current validators and token holders.
🧩 It is important to highlight that whichever option is chosen, the sidechain would still be run by its own set of validators, powered by the SHIP token as the native token of the network in line with the original whitepaper and decisions on this matter will be subject to community voting.

How is the Shipchain team communicating with SHIP token holders?

🛰Mostly through their blogpost but also more directly with an AMA session organized roughly every 6 months.
🛰Here are the articles and summary of the January 2020
https://blog.shipchain.io/from-the-desk-of-the-ceo-1-14-2020/
https://t.me/shipchainunofficial/19258
🛰And here are the details to participate to the upcoming AMA in July-August 2020:
https://t.me/shipchainunofficial/44997

What are the latest news for Shipchain?:

📢 ShipChain mainnet is now live and staking has started #DEFI:
https://blog.shipchain.io/shipchain-mainnet-launch-information/
📢 ShipChain Solution Wins First Place in the Operations and Supply Chain Category of the Ventana Research Digital Innovation Awards
https://blog.shipchain.io/shipchain-wins-first-place-ventana-research-awards/
📢 ShipChain blockchain increases logistics data visibility for KeepTruckin: https://www.cryptoninjas.net/2020/02/14/shipchain-blockchain-increases-logistics-data-visibility-for-keeptruckin/
📢 Ship Chain listed as one of Top Startup Companies in Logistics by Tycoonstory:
https://bit.ly/2QmYtW8
📢 Ship Chain launches its new final mile delivery platform: https://bit.ly/2qWJXuw (upstatebusinessjournal.com)
📢 ShipChain wins Blockchain Innovation Award at #DataccioConnect Singapore: https://bit.ly/2YS7Nnx
📢 ShipChain co-hosts the industry event SC Logistics 2019 Fall Talk in Charleston, SC with DHL, FexEx, Volvo: https://bit.ly/36D4wem
📢 ShipChain graduates from Plug and Play’s 2019 Food and Beverage Accelerator Program: https://bit.ly/36ENpJr
📢 ShipChain Selected by World Economic Forum to Build the Blockchain Toolkit: https://bit.ly/2YMkz74 & https://bit.ly/2PmHMcW (ledgerinsights.com)
🖇 Latest partnerships: GTX Corporation https://bit.ly/36BSmTm (nasdaq.com) & Parcelive by Hanaah https://bit.ly/36Cjr8R (aircargoworld.com)

What are Shipchain’s latest partnerships?

🖇 Distichain https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertanzalone/2020/04/20/shipchain-thinks-public-blockchain-can-transform-logistics-for-small-business/
🖇 Keeptruckin’ 🔥 🔥 https://marketplace.keeptruckin.com/app/shipchain
🖇 GTX Corporation https://bit.ly/36BSmTm (nasdaq.com)
🖇 Parcelive by Hanaah https://bit.ly/36Cjr8R (aircargoworld.com)
🖇 Casestack https://bit.ly/2TZ98Zs (entreprisestimes.co.uk)
🖇 Scanlog https://bit.ly/31c6BwJ (fleetowner.com)
📢 ShipChain graduates from Plug and Play’s 2019 Food and Beverage Accelerator Program: https://bit.ly/36ENpJr
📢 ShipChain Selected by World Economic Forum to Build the Blockchain Toolkit: https://bit.ly/2YMkz74 & https://bit.ly/2PmHMcW (ledgerinsights.com)

Where else can I read or hear about Shipchain?

📖 Latest Dispatch Report: “[…] getting further and further along with one of the largest fast-food companies in the United States. More details to come soon!” https://bit.ly/2RP4nAB
📡Latest podcasts: https://supplychainnowradio.com/episode-196/ & https://bit.ly/2PJyQgO (cerasis.com)
🎥 Latest webinar: “The State of Technology in Food Supply Chains 2019” https://bit.ly/35hCPaV

Is there a plan to build a decentralized governance for any SHIP token and blockchain related matters?

🧩 Yes there is! First insights (draft) about governance of OpenSCALE, upcoming non-profit foundation meant to maintain, promote the Shipchain network and its SHIP token were shared on this channel https://t.me/shipchainunofficial/15039 & https://t.me/shipchainunofficial/14724
🧩 Timings are unknown since first step is to launch the mainnet but go-live within 2020 remains an option (for the legal team to confirm).

How are Shipchain and the Blockchain in Transport Alliance: BiTA related?

🤝 John Monarch informed the testnet community on Gitter in March 2020 that ShipChain was approached by the new leader of the BiTA organization and opened discussions about Shipchain providing our sidechain and standards to them, having members of the BiTA technical + standards committee assisting in development and be a part of what we are doing as third party developers and enhancing the community.
🤝 No official statement were released apart from public appreciation of the latest Shipchain video on Linkedin by the BiTA leader.

How are Shipchain and the Baseline Protocol related?

📖 In April 2020, a crypto Youtuber noticed that Shipchain had recently joined the Baseline Protocol as a community member / stakeholder:
https://youtu.be/bbW5DiUbyo8
https://docs.baseline-protocol.org/community/community-members
📖 Since mid-May 2020, Shipchain has officially joined the Specification Steering Committee (SCC) of the Baseline Protocol, where John Monarch took the lead on 2 particular epics related to EDI and IOT. Activity already visible on githubs. https://github.com/ethereum-oasis/baseline
https://blog.shipchain.io/shipchain-joins-baseline-protocol-initiative/

— —
Reminder of BP’s structure:
• Anyone with a Github ID can view the roadmap, fork the repo, and submit pull requests to contribute to the work.
• Regular Members of the initiative, will manage Issues and push directly to most repo branches (other than Master).
• Members who step up to be accountable for projects can become Specification Steering Committee (SSC) members.
• Members who take on responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the work and merging contributions to the master branch of the repo can become Maintainers.
• Contributors can nominate and vote-in members to be on the governing Technical Steering Committee (TSC) annually.
— —

📖 How does this matter? To answer this question, let’s read first from BP’s chairman, John Wolpert, who was also on the founding team of Hyperledger Fabric, explaining what Baseline is and isn’t: “This is not a platform. It’s not a product. It’s not a coin, a token. It is a way of using the main net (public Ethereum) that will be acceptable, we think, to very conservative corporate CSOs (chief security officers), CIO, CTOs, where they can finally say, yep, it’s okay to use the main net in this way.”
📖 From there, we can take out 4 elements of answer:
1- Joining Baseline Protocol means actively contributing to this initiative. Being able to, along some of the most prominent tech companies of the world, is first of all a recognition of Shipchain’s team technical skills and know-how.
2- Baseline Protocol members share common values with Shipchain’s team who intends to bring and make affordable the public blockchain technology even to small and medium players in the logistics industry.
3- Baseline Protocol is not a blockchain and will consequently not be the technology chosen to run the Shipchain Network.
4- Being part of this consortium is as important as contributing to the World Economic Forum papers or collaborating Blockchain in Trucking Alliance, and allows Shipchain to collectively demonstrate the advantages of public blockchains over permissioned decentralized ledgers, propose concrete solutions and contribute to develop toolkits and standards that will shape blockchain applications in the logistics industry for the many years to come.

Is the SHIP token under-valued?

💸 No one should answer that question for you but there are elements that may help in the process. Considering Shipchain’s existing customer base, business partners (like Keeptruckin’ a Silicon Valley unicorn) and level of recognition within the logistics industry, specifically in the USA, it’s not hard to imagine SHIP as part of the top 50 tokens on CMC.

💸 Having said that, there is a way to scientifically approach tokens’ valuations too:

• in dPoS networks, blocks are validated by special nodes (51 validators in the Loom’s SDK) who need to demonstrate an exemplary behavior towards network’s security and performance (at risk of being replaced by one who will, through the ‘voting process’ of delegation),
  • minimum specs to run a shipchain validator node represent an annual bill of roughly minimum 1000$, without any extra security measures (sentry nodes, HSM, for exemple)
  • the minimum bond to be candidate to a validator seat is 250k SHIP.

➡️ It can be argued that the minimum price for the shipchain network to be considered economically viable is one that guarantees to its validators an annual return that is superior to the one they would get by only being simple delegators.
➡️ Based on year lock up rewards of 20% p.a and a validator fee of 25%, that price would be 0,08$.

• Follow the link to access a simple excel model that can be used to deduce that price.
• The model can also be used to determine when (which SHIP price) running a validator node would be more profitable than delegating your own stack of SHIPs to one.

https://t.me/shipchainunofficial/47570

What was Shipchain’s ICO Price (excluding bonuses)?

1 SHIP = 0.34285 USD = 0.00047 ETH (based on ETH at 730$ or so)

Why did SHIP go down -98% from its presale price?

This results most probably from a combination of factors but 2 of them stand out: premature hype and rather hostile regulatory framework in the US.
A more detailed answer is available in this article:
https://medium.com/@shipmateFRnl/shipchain-scam-or-revolution-faq-f10fe2452e7a/

When Moon?

Several factors can affect the token price:

🚀 Network use:

The intrinsic value of a utility token like $SHIP is to be USED. The SHIP token is to the Shipchain network what ETH is to the Ethereum network. You need SHIP to buy the gas needed to run transactions on the network. Active users tracking shipments means more transactions (it is worth nothing the exponential impact of periodic GPS locations recording on the sidechain) driving more demand for the Shipchain token. Shipchain Inc. with its Last Mile Delivery Platform and mobile app is one of these users and already committed to allocate company reserves to network security and to buy its own SHIPs to acquire network gas.
Shipchain’s mainnet is expected to go live within H1 2020, thus representing a significant milestone this year.

🚀 Liquidity:

Order books on idex and hitbtc are getting thinner and thinner, those 2 exchanges holding less than 3% of the total supply. In this context, selling is difficult whereas market buys trigger double to triple digits price swings. The effect of a live platform and associated network, with dapps owners having to buy tokens for their users’ gas, under such low liquidity context, remains unknown but it is allowed to wonder what kind of attention a 10k$ market buy would trigger on the token.

🚀Scarcity:

The more token holders delegate their tokens to the shipchain dPoS smart contract, the more scarce becomes the asset. As a live experiment, Loom has demonstrated that high level of staking up to 50% of the circulating supply was possible. Furthermore it is expected that professional stakers will join the shipchain network to run validator nodes and these ones have most likely not acquired their 250k bonds yet.

🚀Speculation:

ShipChain is still pretty much under the radar. Following 2 years of alts bear market, when most of the hard coding occurred, most crypto enthusiasts have fallen to the despair that all alts are scam, specifically the micro caps which do not bring the same reassurance to speculators than top 50 coins’ supporting crowds would do. It is likely though that, if blockchain starts to deliver its promises and lands in 2020 first tangible use cases aside from ‘getting rich schemes’, this market will turn favorable again to utility tokens that can demonstrate a real use-case and robust token economics. At that time it will be up to the community of SHIP token holders to make itself visible to the world.

Is there any material for speculation? Certainly!

🧩 John attended the Mastercard #StartPath summit on 5th of December 2019. https://twitter.com/realjohnmonarch/status/1202665808415121409?s=20
🧩 Casestack, Inc., already in partnership with Shipchain, acquired in Dec’18 by HUB Group #3 in top 10 US 3PLs — 2019 (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/07/16/1883593/0/en/Hub-Group-Rises-to-3-in-Top-10-3PL-Industry-Ranking.html)
— — — — Links — — — --
https://hubgroup.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/hub-group-completes-previously-announced-acquisition-casestack
https://www.enterprisetimes.co.uk/2018/04/23/shipchain-signs-blockchain-partnership-with-casestack/
🧩 Cerasis acquired in Jan’20 by GlobalTranz #7 in top 10 US 3PLs — 2019 (https://www.globaltranz.com/blog/globaltranz-voted-inbound-logistics-top-10-3pl/) will help expand GlobalTranz’s growing managed transportation and final mile capabilities.
— — — — Links — — — —
https://t.me/shipchainunofficial/23150 & https://t.me/shipchainunofficial/23055
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/globaltranz-acquires-3pl-cerasis-as-part-of-continued-expansion
🧩 The large Fast-Food company teased in the last Dispatch Report belongs to that list: https://bit.ly/2rNM2sT and the P&P program (according to the latest AMA).
🧩 Will Chainlink and Shipchain collaborate together? See latest AMA and https://bit.ly/2EgPu27
🧩 Always a good idea to develop healthy relationships with your neighbours: #greenville #bmw #acrosstheroad https://bit.ly/2YMvjlU

When can we buy on other exchanges?

🚀 There is a short and a longer path to get where we want to. You can also fast forward to 2021 and forget about all this.
🚀 In both cases, the very first step is to prove the SHIP token is a utility token, by launching a decentralized public blockchain whose native token is the SHIP token, and whose nodes are operated by a wide variety of individuals with different background and interests (type ‘BOT MAINNET’ for more details).
🚀 This step by itself may already unlock a few others but the second milestone will occur later this year (TBC) in the form of a non-profit foundation — type ‘BOT OPENSCALE’ for more details — which will guarantee that not only network’s operations are decentralized but also its governance.
🚀 In the meantime, it is up to the community to promote the SHIP token and its network by engaging with both communities, crypto and logistics’s ones. Our purpose is to either drive higher network security (by increasing token delegation or token liquidity — up to each of us to contribute to the Uniswap pool for example), or drive higher use and adoption of the Shipchain dApps by the logistics industry (by talking about Shipchain to our colleagues, friends or family, write articles etc).
🚀 LOOM is already listed pretty much everywhere. Technically speaking, SHIPCHAIN is exactly like LOOM which will reassure owners of central exchanges.
🚀 Last but not least, we’re convinced that 2020 will be a big year for #DEFI and let’s not forget that the SHIP token can be staked. Something appealing for exchanges like Huobi, or Binance who run their own validators on… Loom! for example.
Here were LOOM’s validators back in Jan 2020. Call them our TARGETS
https://t.me/shipchainunofficial/20930
Stay tuned.

Has Shiphain Inc. ever received a cease and desist order from the State of South Carolina and managed to clear it out?

🧐 Yes, they have, as announced on CCN on the 23rd of May 2018, for supposedly selling securities to South Carolina residents. This initiative was part of a larger operation called “Cryptosweep” intending to crack down on ICOs carried by startups registered in the USA in 2017 and 2018.
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/shipchain-gets-cease-and-desist-vacated
https://www.ccn.com/operation-cryptosweep-shipchain-ordered-to-cease-and-desist-in-south-carolina/
🧐 Few months later, the C&D was fortunately vacated after “ShipChain argued a lack of jurisdiction in a two pronged argument: the company maintained throughout the dispute that it did not believe its SHIP tokens were securities, and also said that the cryptocurrency was not marketed to or purchased by any South Carolina residents.”
Thus, the “Office of the South Carolina Securities Commissioner concluded its inquiry into allegations that it had received against ShipChain regarding its token, and vacated its cease-and-desist order of May 21, 2018. The company fully cooperated with the inquiry.”
“It appears that the cease and desist order was a rapid response to complaints — which turned out to be baseless — about ShipChain’s activities in South Carolina”
http://2hsvz0l74ah31vgcm16peuy12tz.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Order-to-vacate-C-D-01742974xD2C78.pdf

Wait… I have found some negative articles about Shipchain on the USA Herald website, what does it mean?

There are only 3 important elements of answer here:
• The USA Herald website is owned by Richard Gorman, who started a law suit in 2014 against John Monarch, Shipchain’s CEO, for personal reasons that have nothing to do with Shipchain (which did not exist at that time).
• This website as well as other social media and forums seem to be used regularly as communication vehicles to fud John Monarch, his coworkers and any of his professional achievements. Classic slander attempt.
• If you wish to know what is going on between John Monarch and Richard Gorman, there is only one objective place to gather further information about this law suit (still on-going) and form a personal opinion: Greenville County Court’s archives (you will need an American IP address to join this website)
https://www.greenvillecounty.org/
Court Record Search > Case number 2014CP2304432

Why kind of Marketing is Shipchain doing?

‘Marketing’ is one of the most abused word in crypto. Many of those who discovered cryptocurrencies during the ICO craze ended up associating ‘marketing’ with practices solely intending to prop up the token value by steering speculation (paying for exchange listing, announcements of announcements, fake or misleading partnerships, airdrops, paid advertisement on social media, any promotion of the token in general…).
To understand why and where this paradigm is fundamentally incorrect, we ought to come back to 2 fundamentals applying to any crypto companies:

1. Utility tokens vs securities and legal compliance
🎙Good reminder: https://hackernoon.com/security-tokens-vs-utility-tokens-how-different-are-they-22d6be8901c2.

The sole purpose of a utility token is to be… used!

🎙While it is permitted to speculate on how demand for a utility token exceeding its total supply could affect its price (hence their availability for trading), we ought to remember that the regulatory framework in many states and in particular in the USA doesn’t leave any room for token-issuers to carry any of these practices described above, considering they would likely lead to meet one of the Howey’s test conditions*, and thus declaring the token a Security with the obvious disastrous effects this would imply. *“(3) investors are led to expect profits solely from the efforts of the promoter or a third party.”
https://www.winston.com/en/crypto-law-corner/when-it-comes-to-analyzing-utility-tokens-the-sec-staffs-framework-for-investment-contract-analysis-of-digital-assets-may-be-the-emperor-without-clothes-or-sometimes-an-orange-is-just-an-orange.html
🎙It is therefore critical to understand that any of these marketing/hype practices described above are NO-GO ZONES for token-issuers registered in the USA like Shipchain Inc.

2. Profit & Loss:
🎙Any raised money will eventually dry up as there will always be bills to pay, which implies any startups are on a run to profitability = revenues > expenses.
🎙Revenues will come from building a valuable product, and getting users to pay for it in one way or another so,
i. Careful spending is key to ensure the raised money would buy sufficient time to #build. Pro-tips: 1m€ in exchange listing fees is not a careful way of spending money in Year 1.
ii. Users adoption will differ from what product is being built but, ‘Marketing’ efforts should be focused on the targeted consumers. Eg. if you are building the next Ethereum killer, better to attend crypto conferences and try to attract dApps developers — if you are building a Track and Trace platform running on a public blockchain, the most logical marketing strategy is to attend logistics and supply chain conferences and join all consortiums who intended to develop future standards of your industry in this area.

Feel free to search for key words such as NEWS, PARTNERSHIPS, AMA, SPECULATION on this article to read more about Shipchain’s marketing efforts. And EXCHANGES, TOKENOMICS, STAKING, OPENSCALE to understand what is being done to secure SHIP’s status of utility token and enable governance of the token and its network in the future.

IBM has launched Tradelens. What is the difference with Shipchain?

☠️ Please take a look at this article first. https://shipchain.io/files/Private-Versus-Public-Blockchain-white-paper.pdf
☠️The era of centrally controlled private blockchains is coming to an end: https://bit.ly/2RRmq9e (theblockcrypto.com)
☠️ IBM and Maersk chose to sacrifice decentralization with their private Blockchain Tradelens
https://bit.ly/2tdLTzm (coindesk.com)
😱 VeChain Foundation Hacked, $6.5 Million in VET Stolen https://bit.ly/2tiKLdX (cryptobriefing.com)
🚸 All dApps developers are welcome to join and build on the Shipchain ecosystem #strongertogether.

Why ShipChain? Vechain is much bigger!

🚸 You can’t really compare a private blockchain to a public one. The competitive advantage is that ShipChain is an actual public blockchain (read decentralized), while any private effort is technically a centralized database/distributed ledger.
🚸 VeChain has more of a focus on products while ShipChain is more focused on the shipping (a huge focus on truckers and ELD due to latest partnership as well).
🚸The goals, methods and technologies are simply significantly different. From a basic understanding of VeChain, they seem mostly focused on various types of IOT hardware — uploading information about products to a custom blockchain acting as a data warehouse.
🚸 Vechain is more complimentary to what ShipChain does than hard competitors.

Who are Shipchain Inc.’s team members?

🤝 Check team members who decided to be public-facing on the link below or on Linkedin (list non exhaustive)
https://shipchain.io/team.html
🤝 Shipchain’s CEO recently got appointed “Supply Chain Expert ” for The United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT), the UN’s International trade facilitation group.
🤝 John is a member of the World Economic Forum where he’s already contributed to the Blockchain toolkit (check Part 4).
https://www.crunchbase.com/event/world-economic-forum-center-for-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-blockchain-in-supply-chain
🤝 John Monarch is a Forbes Council Member.
https://profiles.forbes.com/members/business/profile/John-Monarch-CEO-ShipChain/8d502bc1-6a51-423c-b91b-cc857b5943ff
🤝 Lee Bailey former CTO who shaped the senior dev team in Greenville and overlooked development on the Shipchain network over last 2 years decided to pursue other challenges outside. Lee was never located in Shipchain’s headquarters.
https://blog.shipchain.io/from-the-desk-of-the-ceo-1-14-2020/

What do we know about the token distribution and top wallets?

💰 The first address on Etherscan has been allocated to the dPoS validator reward pool. These tokens are not in circulation and only 20% of that pool will be released every year, depending on how many SHIP tokens are delegated to the network.
💰 The second address represents Shipchain’s company reserves. It was communicated in July 2020 that these tokens will solely be used to promote/maintain the network through various grants. It could be speculated that ownership of these tokens will ultimately be transferred to the non-profit foundation.
💰 Shipchain Inc. will consequently have to buy their own SHIPs to buy the gas their users/customers need to use the platform (run txs on the Shipchain network).
💰 The top 50 addresses also include exchanges address, such as IDEX, Bilaxy or hitBTC. In July 2020, less than 3% of the total supply is held there. The SHIP token is already a scarce resource. Check order books…
💰 The rest of the top 50 up to rank #30 are known to be a mix of whales who accumulated big time and team members and advisors (specifically the 3.5M wallets). None of them have a lock up period anymore but one can observe these wallets do not show major movement, thus display a long term commitment to the network.

What is the circulating supply?

🧩 At the time of writing (July 2020), the amount of SHIP tokens in circulation is a maximum of 263M SHIPs. Which can be calculated by withdrawing the amounts held on the first 2 wallets to the total supply of 500M SHIPs.
🧩 The circulating supply visible on coinmarketcap is currently incorrect and the Shipchain team has reached out to CMC on the 28th of April for a correction.
🧩 The discrepancy was primarily triggered by the consolidation of few company wallets into a single one, operated on the 27th of April 2020: https://etherscan.io/token/0xe25b0bba01dc5630312b6a21927e578061a13f55?a=0x54dbf55903a9d0451832d47fb0410b2f53cc9cff
🧩 This move was announced on Twitter and described as a consolidation of reserves in preparation for the Mainnet launch:
https://twitter.com/ShipChain/status/1254881902735081479?s=20

What is🤝 ShipChain’s Preferred Operator Program “POP” 🤝?

📦 Subscribe by contacting reisner@shipchain.io
📦 Commitment to run an active node for 1 full year and promise to stay involved in our Gitter, upgrade/maintenance your node when we request it, report bugs and respond to usage surveys to help us make ShipChain Network the best it can be!
📦 Benefits:
💸 Permission to use the “SHIPCHAIN PREFERRED OPERATOR” badge to put on your website and brag about your status as a dedicated partner.
💸 A “Preferred” designation on the Validator List page (this might possibly encourage Delegates to vote for you and share their rewards, eg. on Loom today, delegators share 25% of their rewards with their chosen validator).
💸 /!\ You must hold at least 250k SHIPs and bond them to your validator node when we launch the Mainnet.

Feel free to submit new questions on our Telegram channel. We will post our answers on this article too. Thank you for reading. Please share it if you liked it.

🚚 The ShipChain Community 🚚