BLOCKSHIPPING

The blockchain based GSCP platform is the world's first freight container registry and the first global platform allowing all players in the shipping industry to perform a wide range of transactions related to the handling of containers.

THE PROBLEM

The container shipping industry accounts for around 60% of all the world’s seaborne trade with a total value of approximately USD12 trillion in 2017. But this hugely valuable industry has been troubled for years by challenges like overcapacity, low rates, security threats, and increasing environmental regulations.

It is a well-known fact in the industry that the global shipping needs increased efficiency, improved processes and a fundamental digital transformation to ensure profitability in the future.

Blockshipping’s Global Shared Container Platform (GSCP) is designed
to make key processes in the global handling of containers significantly
more efficient and thereby solve some of the most important problems in the container shipping industry today.

First and foremost, the purpose of the GSCP platform is to provide a complete blockchain enabled container asset registry (like a ship registry) where the fullglobal inventory of containers (more than 27 million units) are registered along with real-time locations of every single container around the world.

The goal within three to four years is to achieve a 60% market coverage with 16 million container units in the GSCP blockchain registry.

In addition, the vision for the GSCP platform is to:

• Become the primary platform for managing operational payments clearing between stakeholders related to physical handling (interchange), haulage and sharing of containers

• Become the shipping industry’s primary IOT platform for real-time tracking of containers enabling real-time visibility of containers to all stakeholders

• Monetise data insights based on Machine Learning, IOT data, AI, and blockchain data

WHY BLOCKCHAIN?

Over the last couple of years, the blockchain technology is matured to such an extent that today it is no longer a risky experiment to base a solution like the GSCP platform on this technology. On the contrary, the blockchain technology has never been tampered with, and it has proven to possess a set of qualities and functionalities, which appeal to an industry like the shipping industry and a solution like the GSCP platform.
With the purpose of obtaining an optimal combination of high scalability, undisputed security, maximum control, privacy & flexibility, and low transactions and energy costs, the GSCP platform will be built on a private (permissioned) blockchain.

After analysing several options, the option we are now considering is The Coco Framework from Microsoft, which “is an open-source system that enables high-scale, confidential blockchain networks. It meets all key enterprise requirements, providing a means to accelerate production adoption of blockchain technology. Coco achieves this through the use of trusted execution environments (TEEs) such as Intel’s SGX and Windows Virtual Secure Mode (VSM), enabling the creation of a trusted network of physical nodes on which to run a distributed ledger.

Furthermore, the Coco Framework based blockchain is not a standalone solution, it is “designed to be open and compatible with any blockchain protocol.” This is important since Blockshipping is issuing both an internal token (based on Coco) and an external ERC20 Ethereum based token for the secondary market.

Basing the GSCP solution on a private blockchain framework like Coco enables a wide range of industry players which do not necessarily trust each other to come together on the same platform and allowing them to exchange services and do fast and large scale transactions in a distributed, decentralised environment controlled collectively by all participating nodes. No trust is needed, and the framework enables a combination of transparency, control and privacy that allow for all participants to gain benefits from using the services and features available on the GSCP platform.

These services and features fall into three main categories:

• Establishment of the global container registry – thereby optimising greybox-and street-turn-strategies across the industry

• Recording of change of ownership of containers and custodianship and thereby reducing losses for companies financing containers

• Internal exchanges of services between users and payments transactions (clearing and settlement) based on an internal GSCP token

By using blockchain technology as a foundation for the GSCP platform Blockshipping aims to resolve – fully or partially – the following well-known industry issues:

• Carriers forego huge annual savings potential at the tune of USD 3 to 5 billion
because of a lack of a trusted platform where deficit/surplus matching of containers can take place

• Carriers have consistently lost out on carrier haulage leaving others to profit on merchant haulage

• Due to lack of a neutral trusted platform triangulation and street turn cost savings opportunities for carriers at the tune of USD 750 million per annum are not being realised

• Due to lack of real time awareness of container locations global container carriers have inflated container inventories which could be reduced by 15 to 20% if containers had real time tracking sensors installed

• Operational business processes are antiquated based on manual paperwork, e-mails and PDFs resulting in poor customer service, high DSO for suppliers and an inflated workforce of staffs in Shared Service Centres in India, the Philippines and China

• Financing in new build containers burdens Global Container Carriers and Global Leasing companies with a higher interest rate than would otherwise be possible if containers had real-time sensors installed providing actual location of containers.

TOKEN DISTRIBUTION AND ICO DETAILS