Cross-border trade, reimagined.
A permissioned document ledger and a liquidity pool for commodity trade finance — replacing two banks with one shared source of truth, and one financing pool.
Paper and SWIFT trade finance spreads goods, documents and funds across three disconnected rails.
Self-finances the shipment; proceeds land 5–10+ business days after shipment.
Unclear all-in cost; no access to goods until paper documents physically arrive.
Document fraud from multiple “original” bills of lading; duplicated compliance checks at every handoff.
No single, tamper-evident record every party can trust without re-verifying it themselves — and two separate banks independently financing the same trade.
Why it persists
- 01Carriers issue bills of lading in their own formats — still often requiring wet-ink originals.
- 02Advising and issuing banks each duplicate the same UCP 600 document examination.
- 03Correspondent banks settle in USD through Fedwire and CHIPS — time-zone cutoffs, reconciliation, per-hop fees.
No party has the incentive or mandate to unify the three rails. Trust gets rebuilt at every handoff instead of established once.
Two layers.
Document ledger
Every trade document is hashed, stored off-chain and encrypted, with status tracked on-chain. One canonical record, instant tamper detection.
Liquidity pool
Replaces both commercial banks. Reads directly off the ledger instead of running a separate paper-based examination.
Attestations written as the shipment moves. Funds released when the record is complete.
Seller, carrier and customs attestations are hashed and written directly to the ledger as the shipment moves.
The pool verifies against the ledger, then funds the seller directly — by invoice sale (Path A) or buyer facility drawdown (Path B).
No correspondent-banking hop. No paper letter of credit. No duplicated document examination.
Both paths read the same verified documents on the ledger, with no separate underwriting process per path.
| Path A · Seller invoice drawdown | Path B · Buyer facility drawdown | |
|---|---|---|
| Who draws | Seller | Buyer |
| Mechanism | Sells invoice and documents to the pool for immediate cash | Draws a pool-backed L/C-equivalent facility |
| Seller gets paid | Immediately, at a discount | Immediately, once the trigger document is confirmed |
| Who repays the pool | Buyer, at invoice maturity | Buyer, on agreed terms (e.g. 30, 60, 90 days) |
What stays the same.
- Documents hashed, encrypted off-chain, status on-chain — unchanged.
- Carrier and inspector attestations written directly to the ledger — unchanged.
- Release trigger: once a defined set of documents is confirmed on-chain — not a single nominated document.
The fraud-prevention design isn't traded away for speed. It's what the pool relies on instead of its own paper examination.
One lane, one commodity, one seller and buyer pair.
A pilot locks a single lane and onboards the pool, builds the document and pool facility contract, tests the trigger and dispute window, then runs a live pool-funded trade — in weeks, not quarters. Buyer facility drawdown comes first; seller invoice sale follows once pricing and recourse are settled.
Discuss a pilotDeep-tier financing and cross-border trade finance run on the same idea: verify once, and let every party rely on it.
