What is Eximchain? | Improving Supply Chain Financing for SMEs

Eximchain: Private Smart Contracts for Supply Chain Financing

Eximchain is an MIT-based software development company using blockchain to improve supply chain financing (SCF). SCF enables investors to fund an organization throughout its supply chain process giving them more working capital and operating cash flow to increase efficiency and reduce risk. Companies that successfully managed this cash flow have decreased their inventory by up to 30% leading to significantly lower operational costs.  

Unfortunately, quality SCF has historically been difficult to implement. Supply chains are large, complex processes that involve numerous parties across the globe. SCF relies on the coordination and aligned incentives of all of the parts of a logistics system.

The project uses blockchain technology to allow the seamless integration of SCF into the systems of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Beyond SCF, these enterprises can also track sourcing to ensure product validity, accurately manage inventory, and create fully customized solutions with the Eximchain SDK.

Eximchain Key Details

Ticker: EXCToken Type: ERC20 until Mainnet LaunchICO Token Price: 1 EXC = ~$0.33Fundraising Goal: $20,000,000Total Tokens: 150,000,000Available for Token Sale: 60,000,000 (40.0%)Know Your Customer (KYC): YesAccepts: ETH

What is Eximchain?

Eximchain includes a set of tools that businesses can use to improve their supply chain process. Although SCF smart contracts are the project’s primary offerings, the blockchain platform helps with quality assurance and inventory tracking as well.

Supply Chain Finance

The Eximchain’s main focus is on SCF integration. The system gives financiers a transparent look into the cash flow of a supply chain so that they can more accurately judge the risk of the investment. As mentioned earlier, supply chains are complicated, and the incentives of one player may not align with the success of the entire ecosystem.

To solve this conundrum, Eximchain is implementing Multi-Party Dynamic Contracting in its SCF solution. This contracting mechanism uses game-theory techniques to ensure that all associated parties (buyers, sellers, financiers) act in a way that supports the entire system instead of just their individual silos.

Sourcing and Inventory Management

Eximchain smart contracts also record item transactions between buyers and sellers on the blockchain. Because the record is on an immutable ledger, buyers can track where an item has been all the way back to the source and confidently know it to be accurate.

Eximchain’s blockchain also provides a consistent and accurate ledger of inventory. Each individual entity in the supply chain can look at the shared information and base their process around it.  

Software Development Kit (SDK)

The Eximchain SDK allows businesses to fully customize their own end-to-end supply chain solution. Although the blockchain is public, it utilizes private smart contracts to ensure the protection of proprietary information and transactional data.

Eximchain Token (EXC)

Eximchain is distributing ERC20 tokens during the ICO, but the platform will use a native token (EXC) once it’s live. Once available, you’ll need to trade your ERC20 tokens for the native EXC tokens, and you won’t be able to trade the ERC20 tokens in the meantime.

Token holders use EXC to pay network fees, validate state changes, and execute governance. Eximchain has forked QuorumChain’s vote-based consensus method and added a few additional governance rules. Similar to Proof-of-Stake, Eximchain’s consensus method doesn’t require miners. Instead, nodes on the platform vote to maintain the network consensus and earn additional EXC by staking their funds.Unlike Proof-of-Stake, nodes can be voted off the consensus mechanism no matter the amount of EXC that they hold.

Token Sale

Eximchain has set a hard-cap of $20 million for their token sale. At that time, the team will create 150 million tokens and distribute 60 million (40%) to the ICO participants. The team is going to split the rest of the tokens according to the chart below.

Eximchain Competition

VeChain Thor and Waltonchain are Eximchain’s two biggest competitors in the supply chain space. Both competitors have seen significant growth this year so far and boast some impressive partnerships.

To differentiate themselves, Eximchain is first focusing on the financial side of supply chains while the other two projects revolve around the physical products. Either way, logistics is a large enough industry that all three should find plenty of room to operate.

Other potential competitors include Modum, Wabi, and OriginTrail.

Eximchain Team

Hope Liu (CEO) and Can Kisagun (Advisor) started Eximchain out of the MIT Media Lab in 2016. Juan Sebastian Huertas (CTO) joined the team shortly thereafter. Since then, the team has won the Engine of Innovation prize at the Rice Business Plan competition and signed 9 letters of intent (LOIs) with a variety of companies.

Liu is the lab lead for the North America Blockchain Association and has over 6 years experience handling cross-border transactions at UBS Asia. Kisagun was the original CEO of Eximchain before moving on to co-found Enigma. Huertas began coding at 13 and created a cryptocurrency game during his Junior year at MIT.  

Eximchain Pros

• Huge market. Supply chain and logistics is a multi-trillion dollar market with a commonly stated goal of continuous improvement. Eximchain technology ties in perfectly with this goal.

• Smart team. The majority of the team members are MIT graduates with ample experience in supply chain and blockchain technology.

• Proven accomplishments. Even without a mainnet, the team has secured LOIs, won competitions, and participated in a reputable accelerator program, Plug and Play.

Eximchain Cons

• No product yet. The mainnet won’t be available until Q2/Q3 this year, 2018. There’s still a lot the team needs to prove with this launch.
• Unbalanced token distribution. Only 40% of the EXC tokens are distributed to ICO contributors. This is less than most ICOs; however, the team is allocating an additional 20% to the early adopter SMEs on the platform. Considering that the SMEs are the primary users of the token, this may pan out for the better in the long run.

Final Thoughts

Eximchain is attempting to improve the supply chain processes of SMEs by providing them with a robust SDK to build their own blockchain solutions. Unlike other supply chain projects, the team is first tackling issues with financing. From there, they’ll move into inventory management and item sourcing.

The team is filled with MIT graduates and advisors with a ton of experience in both blockchain technology and supply chain processes.

With as large as an industry as logistics is, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Eximchain have a great run. A successful mainnet launch and continued business development should produce great results for the Eximchain team this year.

Additional Eximchain Resources

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