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The following is an objective review of the Sentinel-Chain project. The review is based on the criteria that we think are important for an ICO project to succeed. We measure a successful ICO by estimating short and long-term ROI. The following is not financial advice.
Introduction
There are more than 570 Million farms worldwide, most of which are small and family operated, and rely on their livestock for their living. These smallholder farmers rely on seasonal agricultural production for their livelihoods. Approximately 70% of the global food production comes from small-scale agriculture. Most of those farmers, worldwide, do not insure their livestock, as the premiums are too high. Nor can they receive affordable loans, as their main fortune, livestock, is not recognized as a collateral by financial services.
Sentinel Chain plans to use Blockchain technology to allow those farmers to receive financial services based on livestock as collateral. Sentinel Chain is to build a B2B2C marketplace to connect financial institutions with the livestock owners.
Sentinel-Chain has already established partnerships to easily create this new and innovative market. For the supply side, Sentinel partnered with MayBank, Medishares, Crowdo (Financial lenders, insurance agents), and for the demand side, they have partnered with Cloudwell, a company that serves more than 300,000 farmers in Bangladesh. Sentinel is also creating an ambassador network of worldwide influencers to promote Sentinelâs vision, their first ambassador is Cetalin Ivan, a member of the European Parliament for Romania.
Sentinel Chain is led by an experienced, hardworking team and is backed by top VCs â Fenbushi Capital and IGlobe partners. Sentinel also signed a strategic partnership with Vechain, a public provenance blockchain and a top 20 crypto project by market cap.
Sentinel is aiming to raise a total of 14.4 Million USD to fund their project in March.
Letâs get going with our evaluation!
Sentinel Chain
The Sentinel Chain is the worldâs first global B2B marketplace platform for financial inclusion services accepting the use of livestock as collateral.
The ultimate objective of the Sentinel Chain is to unlock the economic potential of the unbanked by bringing together an international community of financial providers looking to participate in facilitating financial inclusion in an open, secure and transparent marketplace. It is specifically designed to provide affordable and secure financial services to those who need it most â the 2 billion unbanked.
The Sentinel Chain project seeks to introduce livestock as âcapitalâ in the formal financial economy, the transformation from âdead capitalâ to a financial asset class will increase investment and participation substantially. The basis for such a solution lies in the creation of a physically tamper-proof and digitally-immutable system capable of livestock provenance â the origin of a livestockâs existence.
The Sentinel Chain Ecosystem is made up of 5 main components:
- Tamper-Proof Livestock Tag
- CrossPay Mobile Application
- CrossPay Blockchain
- Sentinel Chain
- Sentinel Chain Token
Livestock ID Tag is tamper-proof and theft-proof on both a material design as well as a data level.
- From a material design perspective, the tag has been designed to prevent physical tampering or theft. The tag has been designed for âsingle-useâ and thus cannot be removed without being destroyed.
- From a data perspective, the tag stores the geolocation and time stamp information on to the CrossPay Blockchain. Immutability and non-repudiation ensures the authenticity and secure traceability of certifications, i.e. a digital âpassportâ that proves its existence and ownership to an identified entity and origin.
- From both a material design and data perspective, in the event that the tag has been forcibly removed, the information which resides in the tag will be invalidated, thus rendering the tag useless.
CrossPay Blockchains (Backend) The CrossPay Blockchain is a B2C financial ecosystem. Managed and operated within a local geography, it is accessible via the CrossPay Mobile application â a simple mobile interface built for Android.
The Assets on the cross-pay blockchains will be the livestock identity, and the âLocal CrossPay Tokenâ (or LCT). LCT will be pegged to the value of the countryâs native currency.
CrossPay Mobile Application (Frontend) The CrossPay Mobile application (Android) is a mobile financial delivery mechanism for use with the CrossPay Blockchain. It is also designed to be a mobile wallet that provides the unbanked with quick access to their balances and allows for transactions with other users and merchants.
Sentinel Chain â a global B2B market place
The Sentinel Chain is a consortium blockchain that operates within decentralized governance and is connected to multiple CrossPay Blockchains. In doing so, the Sentinel Chain and the CrossPay Blockchains create a hub-and-spoke ecosystem specifically designed to provide a low-cost cross-border financial infrastructure. Such an infrastructure will provide liquidity to the local unbanked population via an international network of financial providers.
Sentinel Chain Token (SENC)
The Sentinel Chain Token (SENC) will be an ERC20-compatible token on the public Ethereum blockchain that allows global financial service providers and cryptocurrency holders to participate in the Sentinel Chain marketplace. Activity on the Sentinel Chain will be performed solely using the Sentinel Token. This will make the Sentinel Token an integral part of the Sentinel Chain platform and the driver of its economy.
SENC and LCT tokens
LCT is a token that resides only within each local cross-pay blockchain, pegged to the value of the geographical area currency. SENC, is the medium of exchange between foreign assets and LCT. SENC will used by any financial entity that wishes to offer financial services to a specific local community.
Real Life Example of The future use of Sentinel-Chain
Letâs take Bob, a rural farmer from Bangladesh as an example. In Bangladesh, about 83% of the 160M citizens, own livestock.
Bob sells his livestock milk through CloudWell (Recently announced partnership with Sentinel-Chain).
CloudWell is a fintech company headquartered in Bangladesh which facilitates instant payment services for milk supply (it has access to ~300k farmers in Bangladesh). CloudWell, through Agent Banking Outlets at the Co-Operative Society or Village Milk Collection Centre, also offers financial solutions to the dairy farmers, herdsmen, and milkmen of Bangladesh. The partnership with Sentinel-Chain will allow Cloudwell to offer their customers financial services with better rates.
Bob wants to build a house for his family. He doesnât have enough money for that, though he owns 50 milk producing cows. Bob wants to apply for a loan with his cows serving as collateral for better interest rates. He approaches the nearest Cloudwell agency.
The agent, with veterinarian consultant, will offer the farmer temper proof tags to put on his herd and which connect digitally to all the data regarding each cow (age, owner identity, milk production rate, health, etc.). The cow identity and owner identity will be loaded to the CrossPay blockchain.
Then, the CrossPay app will be installed on Bobâs phone.
Insurance companies will have the opportunity to go through Bobâs insurance request and all the necessary details and history regarding his livestock.
Bob will then receive insurance offers for his cows through the app, possibly from Greed-Delta (The largest non-life insurance company in Bangladesh), which recently partnered with Sentinel-Chain.
Bob will digitally sign an Insurance agreement of his choice.
With the insurance in hand, Bob can now receive loan offers with his livestock as collateral, possibly from CloudWell (Also via the CrossPay app). Bob will sign the loan agreement and receive the loan in LCT tokens (pegged to the value of the native currency). The LCT tokens will be bought by financial entities wishing to offer financial services on the Sentinel-Network.
Data regarding the cow can be accessed by the financial providers that are part of the CrossPay blockchain. For instance, the identity of the Cow owner, the medical state of the cow, the milk production capability, age of the cow, and if the cow has insurance or serves as collateral for a loan.
By registering the owner and his cows to the CrossPay app, Bob can also receive loans from overseas financial lenders. Sentinel-Chain recently announced a partnership with Crowdo,
Crowdo is the first lending platform that is fully licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), the Financial Services Authority of Indonesia (OJK) and the Securities Commission Malaysia
Bobâs loan request will also be offered to more than 34,000 overseas members of the Crowdo platform, who are potential lenders.
If Bob signs a loan agreement with an overseas lender, it will be settled through a B2B2C mechanism. The overseas lender (a member on Crowdo) will transfer SENC to the local Lender provider (For example, CloudWell), and CloudWell will transfer LCT tokens to Bob.
Team
9 team members and 3 council members
Roy Laiâ Founder, CEO
Roy has more than 20 years of technological experience with expertise in blockchain, investment banking, and inter-bank payments. Roy led the successful implementation of FAST (Fast & Secure Transfers) â a national real-time payment network connecting 14 banks in Singapore. A Research Fellow at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, he teaches courses on Blockchain Programming and smart contracts.
Hock Lai Council member
Hock has ~20 years of experience in the financial industry, having performed roles in both business and technology. Besides being the founding president of the Singapore FinTech Association, he is also a Fellow of the Singapore University of Social Science, advisor to Startups and mentor to student FinTech projects.
Advisory Board
Bo Shen is the Founding Partner of Fenbushi (Along side Vitalik Buterin) and BlockAsset. Fenbushi Capital, founded in 2015, is one of the most reputable and involved venture capital in the crypto sphere.
Professor David Lee is in the fintech and blockchain space in Asia as well as Silicon Valley. Co-founder of BlockAsset (alongside Bo-Shen), a leading venture capitalist in the crypto sphere. Early founding investor of notable crypto projects as ZCASH, OmiseGo, Qtum, TenX, and more.
Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar is the CEO & Co-founder at RSK Labs. Founded in 2015, RSK Labs is the first general purpose smart contract platform secured by the Bitcoin Network. A reputable project, partnered with highly reputable entities in the crypto sphere.
For all team members and advisory board, please visit Sentinel-Chain website.
Sentinel Chain Alliance Partners
InfoCorp has formed alliances with various strategic partners to extend the value of the Sentinel Chain.
InfoCorp Technologies is parent company to Sentinel Chain. Sentinel Chain is a project that involved InfoCorp Technologies and InfoCorp Foundation.
Maybank is Malaysiaâs largest bank by both market capitalization and total assets. It is also one of the largest banks in Southeast Asia, with total assets exceeding US$164 billion and net profit of US$1.63 billion for 2016. As the leading Malaysian banking group, with a strong regional presence in South Asia and Southeast Asia, Maybank acts as the main provider of settlement and foreign exchange services to InfoCorp, in facilitating Sentinel Chainâs operations.
VeChain is renowned for creating a powerful public provenance blockchain that can be used to combat counterfeit luxury goods. As livestock ownership and ownersâ data remains on the Sentinel Chain, the provenance of the livestock can reside on a public provenance platform that is integrated to Sentinel Chain, such as VeChain. This can be useful in the case of cross-border livestock trade and food supply chain where proof of origin is required.
MediShares is the worldâs first global marketplace for mutual aid backed by ZhongTopia, the largest online mutual insurance in China with a membership base of 10 million users. MediShares platform can be integrated to Sentinel Chain as a financial service provider and offer its services to Sentinel Chainâs unbanked market.
Roadmap
The Sentinel Chain project was launched in Q3 2017. In November 2017, the project was announced to the public. To date there is a working prototype for the CrossPay app.
Q2 2018 SENC to be listed and traded on various token exchanges and Beta testing of Sentinel Chain
Q4 2018 CrossPay will go live in the first unbanked market
Q1 2019 Sentinel Chain v1.0 will go live Onboarding of the first financial service provider partner
Q4 2019 Sentinel Chain v2.0 will go live
Token Sale- March 2018
Hard Cap: 14.4M USD
Private Allocation (raised 6.4M USD): Selected early backers, 25% Bonus, 3 months lockup (vested over time), backed by Funbushi Capital, iglobe partners and more.
Public Sale (8M USD): Proof of Support mechanism. Contributors will receive an allocation which correlates to how much they support the project, from Tier 1 (up to 500$) to Tier 4 (up to 25,000$), Tier 4 includes influencer campaigns on social media (YouTube, Twitter, ICO review sites, etc.).
Pros
Project Feasibility
Sentinel Chain aims to digitalize the livestock of farmers so it will be treated as any other real-world asset (apartment, land, car, etc.), and by doing so allow farmers to be exposed to financial opportunities like loans, insurance, and more. This vision is ambitious and a top team is needed. The Sentinel Chain team, led by Roy lai, is aiming for the world market, though it will begin its penetration from Bangladesh and Myanmar. They have already accomplished a lot in only a few months, it is a hard working team. There is a working prototype and they have partnered with top companies in all the necessary industries. For the supply side, Sentinel partnered with MayBank, Medishares, Crowdo (Financial lenders, insurance agents), and for the demand side, they have partnered with Cloudwell, a company that serves more than 300,000 farmers in Bangladesh.
The company also has a top crypto advisory board (Bo-Shen, David Lee) and top VCs invested (Fenbushi Capital, Iglobe Partners) which gives the project great credibility and great connections in the crypto sphere. These connections have already led to a strong and necessary partnership with Vechain.
Project Potential
There are more than 570 M farms worldwide, most of which are small, family operated and rely on their livestock for their living. To date affordable insurance for their livestock or an affordable loan that is backed with the livestock as collateral was basically unavailable. This is also a problem in western countries and not only in developed countries, it is a worldwide problem. The potential financial volume for this new market is huge. For an overseas entity to offer financial services on the platform, it must buy SENC tokens from the market. When the Sentinel Chain platform is live in 2019, and if the platform is successful, the demand for SENC tokens should be high. Taking into consideration the low market cap of SENC post ICO (14.4 M USD), it should lead to a prominent rise in the token price.
ICO terms
Sentinel Chain is aiming to raise 14.4 M USD, 6.4 M USD already raised via private allocation with 25% Bonus, vested over 3 months. There was unmet demand for the private and public sale participation (Whitelist).
Sentinel Chain is one of the top projects opportunities currently available for crypto investors in our vision. They could easily have raised their Cap to 30 M USD and it would still be reasonable. Though, to accomplish Sentinelâs vision for the mid-term, they donât need any more funds.
The ICO terms indicates that Sentinel Chain is not here for the flip, but for the long run. It also means that we should see high buying demand for SENC tokens once theyâre released to the market.
Cons
Use for SENC token- 2019
The use of SENC token in the platform is strong and if the platform succeeds, we should see a rise in SENC token price as it correlates to the volume of money transacted by overseas lenders to local farmers. Though, we accept that will only happen in 2019 when the Sentinel Chain platform V2 is launched. This is a bit of a long time to wait for the first real demand for the token.
CryptoPotato ICO Evaluation â result
Key for the evaluation: IF = Impact Factor WA = Weighted Average
Team & Advisory board:Â Experienced team and top advisory board (Bo-shen, Dr. David Lee, Diego Gutierrez Zaldivar). Score 9.5 IF 5 WA 1.72
Stage of the project:Â Working prototype, top partnerships in necessary industry fields. Score 9 IF 1 WA 1.72
Project potential:Â Aiming to solve a worldwide problem with a first mover advantage. Score 9.5 IF 3 WA 1.29
Community and Media:Â ~13,156 Telegram members, ~2,256 Twitter followers. Proof of Support public token distribution. Score 9 IF 2 WA 0.73
Token use:Â SENC is the only mean of transferring money from an overseas lender to the local community. Score 9 IF 3 WA 1.29
ICO:Â Hard Cap- 14.4 M USD, 6.4 M USD raised in a private sale (Bonus of 25%, vested over 3 months). Score 9.5 IF 5 WA 1.7
Whitepaper:Â Very detailed whitepaper explaining both the business and technical aspects of project. Score 9 IF 1 WA 0.43
Backend and Technology:Â Tamper-proof livestock tag, different blockchains used for local, consortium and public networks. Score 8.5 IF 2 WA 0.72
CryptoPotato Sentinel-Chain ICO score: 9.18/10
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