Digital services come into existence as the sitation requires

Reporter Zhao Bo

An interview with Mr.Stefan Kukman,CEO of CargoX

In your opinion，how does the block chain change the shipping trade?

Stefan Kukman: Blockchain provides several benefits to the shipping industry. The most important is the reduction in costs and manual labor, with the highest level of safety for users.

Our technology eliminates the costs and time associate with completing, transferring, and processing paper bills of lading, which adds up to billions of dollars every year.In addition to that, many processes can be automated once payments are integrated in smart contracts.

Apart from that, all actions are irreversible and timestamped, which means there’s less room for dispute over ownership and liability ect.

How to promote the practice of electronic bills of lading? How safe is CargoX’s new technology?

Stefan Kukman: Adoption and use of Smart B/L, our

blockchain-based bill of lading platform, is easy and user friendly, and that’s the key to getting it into people’s hands. Our goal is to make it so easy to switch to our system that there’s no reason not to. We’re making it readily available to all companies along the supply chain,from logistics companies to importing and exporting companies, and we’re making it low-cost.

Our blockchain-based smart contract is completed by the logistics company (either through an API or manually)and all that their customers need to do is sign the transfer of ownership once the payment has been received.Basically, we’re providing an easy way for companies to eliminate time-consuming and costly procedures from their operations. That’s how you get people to adopt new technology. You make it prof i table and easy to use.

Blockchain technology is the safest technology known today. There are no central storage / servers which hackers could attack, all data is irreversible and cannot be changed without the approval of all the parties involved. Even if (in the worst case) our application is not operating, all data is permanently written on the blockchain and will be accessible to all those who are allowed to see it (involved parties with private keys – the importer/exporter/logistics company).

How is CargoX innovating with block chain technology and paperless bill of lading?

Stefan Kukman: CargoX is about to launch the world’s first blockchain-based application that reduces the cost of global trade reduce and bring an end to the use of paper B/L shipping documents. Apart from the benef i ts described, Smart B/L will also increase supply chain visibility. Because it’s an open platform, CargoX will allow for easy integration by other 3rd party providers.This means that our blockchain Smart B/L will also have the functionality of showing the origin of goods,the current location of the goods, electronic archiving of documents, and other critical trade and visibility information.

With the integration of settlement solutions (which we are partnering with MakerDAO to develop) there is the option for payment guarantee for trading companies,as well as credit for small businesses at a much lower interest rates than they can get from banks.

In short, we expect CargoX to become a fully encrypted,market neutral trade platform where the logistics and trade communities can transact and manage their shipments from end-to-end without worrying about the safety of their data.

What is the market promotion at present? Is it interested in the Chinese market?

Stefan Kukman: We have just started promoting our Smart B/L blockchain application here in Europe, and in just a few weeks we have already attracted many partners and supporters. China is our biggest and most important market, because global trade depends heavily on Chinese exporting companies. We are attending the Canton Fair this spring and we will promote our product to Chinese exporters and logistics companies. We will contact Sinotrans, as having such a partner would be a win- win situation. Our Smart B/L would allow Sinotrans to pass on signif i cant cost savings to its customers and make it one of the fi rst shipping companies to offer its customers and partners a paperless solution which is user-friendly and offers the highest level of security.

There are thousands of other Chinese importers,exporters, and logistics companies that could save time and money with Smart B/L and gain a competitive advantage. CargoX provides a global trading platform that gives smaller companies the same advantages as the big ones by letting them instantly transfer ownership of shipments. As the world’s largest exporter, China is one of our most important markets and we are doing everything we can to reach customers there.

What are the development resistance of smart bills of lading? How to overcome it?

Stefan Kukman: Actually, there is no resistance, and the shipping industry is very excited about the switching to blockchain. We were exploring all possible scenarios months before the we conducted our $7 million ICO funding, and we focused on house B/Ls. We found that there are no impediments to this technology within the shipping industry. Cryptocurrency use could be a bit of a challenge, because the largest logistics companies are not yet buying CXO (CargoX tokens needed for B/L issue), therefore we will do this for them and credit their accounts.

Could you introduce CargoX for our reader? At the beginning, why did you want to develop and build the digital bill of lading?

Stefan Kukman: I have been in the logistics sector for decades and it makes no sense to me that we are still using paper in 2018 to transport document or legal ownership of goods. Before blockchain, there were attempts to create an electronic bill of lading, but this never got very far. There are several reasons for that.Now with blockchain we can have a +1/-1 method,meaning that once I have sent the ownership token to the other person, I don’t have it anymore. Just like sending money through a bank. As soon as I click send, it is gone from my account. Blockchain and our application offer the same thing to bill of lading owners. Once the exporter gets paid, it only takes one click to transfer ownership to the consignee, and they need to sign the transaction with their private key (Trezor, Nano Ledger, JSON fi le). The moment they do that, they lose ownership of the goods and transfer ownership to the consignee (importer).Once the containers arrive at the port of destination, the release agent already has the ownership token and he can release the goods to the importer. All this can be done in minutes, from the origin to the destination, with much lower costs, higher security and less bureaucracy.

An interview with Mr.Peter Ludvigsen,CEO of Blockshipping

Could you introduce Blockshipping’s business for our reader?

Peter Ludvigsen: Blockshipping is a Scandinavian company based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Blockshipping is developing the Global Shared Container Platform(GSCP) that will enable a savings potential for the global container industry at the tune of USD 5.7 billion per year by smarter handling of intermodal freight containers.

What is the original intention of the company?

Peter Ludvigsen: 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 register)where the full global 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 3-4 years is to achieve a 60% market coverage with 16 million container units in the GSCP blockchain registry.

It is my life dream to radically improve the way containers are managed by eliminating unnecessary empty container trips helping Global Containers Carrier save intermodal cost and empty container repositioning cost. At the same time the GSCP will help reduce CO2 emissions by 4.6 Million tons of CO2 every year.

How many dollars could be shipping companies save?

Peter Ludvigsen: The cost savings estimated at USD 5.7 Bn per annum are savings which are only attainable if the Container Carriers are willing to collaborate in sharing containers. The savings will materialize in three different areas: Reduction in empty container repositioning,reduction in global container fl eet and reduction in empty haulage / intermodal cost.

How will Blockshipping or block chain technology benef i t shipping and ports?

Peter Ludvigsen: Several reports and whitepapers have been issued over the last couple of months which highlights the benef i t of using Blockchain Technology in the global supply chain.We particular like a report from Accenture Consulting called “Closing the Halls of Mirrors” which has a really succinct takeaway: “Even basic applications of blockchain technology in supply chain— particularly,where contracts occur—can yield substantial cost reductions and efficiency benefits to supply chain operations. This can be done both from the ‘connecting with’ suppliers and customers phase through read/write, and to one point for millions of participants, and the ‘ongoing communication’ phase by enormously reducing transaction volumes and irregularities. The shift to a common blockchain journal of data for all parties—which will avoid unnecessary reconciliation,miscommunication, and poor enforcement of joint contract standards—will create an order-of-magnitude opportunity for those who adopt”.

What is the market promotion at present? Is it interested in Chinese market?

Peter Ludvigsen: Peter Ludvigsen: We are actively promoting the Blockshipping ICO through many different Social Media channels. We are in dialogue with 4 global container carriers and we have in the last week been contacted by two smaller container carriers who are interested in potentially using the GSCP platform. The form of cooperation is that GSCP is a neutral platform and the container carriers and global leasing companies are customers.

Even though we have not been promoting our ICO actively in China, we have still gained a lot of attention from Chines shipping and crypto media, so there is no doubt that the Chinese market is interested in Blockshipping.

We have a list of potential new products and services that we will consider to launch as products once we have implemented the GSCP Platform. Many of these new product ideas relate to use of sensors on dry ventilated containers.Our long-term goal is that all containers enrolled on the GSCP Platform have real time location sensors aff i xed at a target unit price not exceeding USD 50 with an annual service fee not exceeding USD 15 per year (battery lifetime must be minimum 10 years). This will truly transform the global supply chain.

How safe is ICO?

Peter Ludvigsen: Whether an ICO is safe or not depends on two essential things: Is the underlying business case sound and robust & Can you trust the people behind the ICO.

Despite the large potential and the innovative nature of the ICO model, 2017 has clearly shown that since the ICO and cryptocurrency space is – still – almost unregulated, unfortunately it sometimes appeals to dubious projects.

Thus, to protect the idea of the ICO and make it possible to develop it further going forward, it is crucial to decide on and establish common standards and code of conducts for how to run an ICO. That is why a group of Danish ICO experts came together in 2017 to develop the ICO 2.0 framework. The group consists of the leading Danish law firm Kammeradvokaten/Poul Schmith and the leading Nordic Fintech Consulting agency, Norf i co.

Blockshipping’s GSCP ICO is the first ever ICO to be based on the new ICO 2.0 framework. The purpose of ICO 2.0 framework is to increase the quality standards for ICOs making sure that future Danish ICOs: are 100%compliant with Danish law, aim at the highest standards in terms of security and quality of coding, promote openness, transparency, and honesty follow a strict code of conduct when it comes to communications and relation building with the ICO stakeholder groups.

By introducing the ICO 2.0 framework the group behind the framework hope to restore the credibility of the ICO idea and establish a brand of trust to be used by credible,high quality ICO projects.