Unbanking of the world: Sentinel Chain
Tags: Fintech, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Unbanking Of The World, Bitcoin

This article is a continuation of my previous article called “Unbanking of the world: Bitcoin vs. Blockchain” where I discussed the relationship banks have towards blockchain and bitcoin and the narrative they are creating.

In the “Unbanking of the world” series I will be highlighting blockchain projects that I believe have the ability to empower the unbanked people of the world.

The pitch:

“The Sentinel Chain is a B2B marketplace specifically designed to provide affordable and secure financial services to the unbanked”

Vision:

Initial Coin Offerings have been the buzzword for the last couple of months. Investors are flocking towards the newest and hottest ICO´s in the market, in an effort to get their hands on it before whitelists are filled or hard-caps are reached. The huge growth in ICO´s have made it extremely difficult to identify projects that are actually seeking to bring value to the world and not just based on hype and speculative behavior.

Blockchain at its core was created with the goal to enable financial inclusisvity and equality to the world. It is therefore a sight for sore eyes to see InfoCorps´s new blockchain project Sentinel Chain entering the market. Sentinel chain aims to bring banking and financing to the unbanked and underbanked population of the world by creating the worlds first platform that is able to accept the use of livestock, such as cattle as collateral.

Today, farmers all around the world do not have access to traditional lending and financing services due to the lack of collateral. Farmers, unlike others have much of their capital locked up in livestock, rather than assets such as mortgageable houses.

Livestock is not recognized as collateral by banks and financing services because of the absence of information in regards to ownership and verified systems that are able to translate livestock into concrete value, resulting in no legally recognized collateral.

Livestock will be turned into collateral by creating a blockchain based platform called Sentinel Chain, and through the the utilization of RFID tagging designed to be both tamper and theft proof live stock will be able to be registered, quantified and identified. Furthermore, simple mobile softwares will be used in order to smoothen the ease of use for the people in the unbanked world, while combating the tedious practices of banking and financial institutions. Finally, the underbanked and unbanked farmers of the world will be able to take advantage of lending and financing services.

Value proposition and how it works:

Sentinel Chain with its first-mover advantage is bound to be groundbreaking if successful. Success would mean credit access to a huge untapped market (farmers) and a change in how lending and financing services have traditionally been managed and executed.

The blockchain market is flooded with projects that take on a huge problem to solve, by creating one blockchain to rule them all that will be able scale and grow in order to process the amount of transactions that they are aiming for when mass adoption of the technology happens. However, Sentinel Chain has a different approach to this matter. They want to combine various blockchains in one ecosystem to deal with the scalability and processing issues that may occur in the future. This ecosystem will work together and fulfill each others needs instead of having one blockchain to deal with it all. The ecosystem will be structured as follows:

Crosspay blockchain:

With each respective country that Sentinel Chain targets, a private crosspay blockchain will be created. The private Crosspay blockchain will be utilized as a store of information, where farmers can by the use of the Crosspay mobile app privately access their information, with regards to loans and other information.

The tamper proof RFID tagging technology, cross pay mobile application and blockchain technology will all be vital components of the Crosspay blockchain. They will all be working together to unlock the value of the “dead capital” tapped in livestock.

The Crosspay blockchain will use a native cryptocurrency token called “Local Crosspay Token”, which will be pegged to the value of the country´s native currency.

Consoritum Blockchain — Sentinel Chain:

The blockchain will operate within decentralized governance and is connected to multiple Crosspay blockchains, thus creating a hub-and-spoke ecosystem, providing a low-cost cross-border financial infrastructure, enabling flow of liquidity to farmers and the unbanked world via a network of financial providers. Sentinel Chain will be the main chain, where the tokens reside and services, such as crowdfunding, collateral and loans are accessed.

VeChain Blockchain:

Sentinel Chain has recently partnered up with VeChain, which is best known for its powerful public provenance blockchain that can be used to combat counterfeit luxury goods. VeChain´s blockchain will be integrated with Sentinel Chain´s blockchain. Information, such as age, weight, health of livestock will be stored publicly on the VeChain blockchain in a immutable and transparent manner, while keeping the farmers privacy in tact on the Crosspay blockchain.

Chain of incentives:

To further strengthen the ecosystem Sentinel Chain wants to introduce a “Chain of Incentives”. The ecosystem is maintained by balancing the incentives between the unbanked, insurance companies and the lending outlets. It works as a retention tool for existing parties involved in the ecosystem and as a catalyst for new parties to get involved. Incentives for the various parties:

Peer-to-peer lending pools, banks and financial institutions will be incentivised by financial incentives. They are going to be able to tap into a huge market for micro financing. A market that has not been able to be taken advantage of before, due to transparency and trust issues.

Sentinel Chain´s ecosystem of blockchain´s will provide the transparency and trust that has been missing in the past, and lenders will be able to access all the information needed to make a valid decision when issuing loans. Information pertaining to the health and realness of the livestock, the ownership of the farmer of the livestock and whether the livestock has been collateralised for other loans.

Governments will be incentivised by this huge market that opens up, in terms of supporting the ecosystem with adoption and regulation, as farmers being able to get financing will in turn increase output and growth.

Insurance companies will be have a completely new market open up in front of them and just like the lenders they too will be able to access all the necessary information needed to issue an insurance policy.

Farmers will have to be transparent about their livestock and themselves in order to be eligible for insurance and financing. The economic incentive in form of financing is larger then the cost for getting insurance and registering livestock on the blockchain.

The Sentinel Chain Token (SENC):

SENC will primarily be utilized as a medium of exchange for the Local Community Token (LCT), which is used to make payments for services or participate in projects.

Partnerships:

As a function of their ties to InfoCorp, Sentinel Chain boasts an impressive list of real world partnerships that will partake in bringing the project to life. According to Sentinel Chain´s whitepaper the partners are as follows:

“ MediShares : Is the world´s 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 financial service proivder and offer its services to Sentinel Chain´s unbanked market.”

: Is the world´s 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 financial service proivder and offer its services to Sentinel Chain´s unbanked market.” “ Maybank is Malaysia’s largest bank by both market capitalisation 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 Chain’s operations.”

is Malaysia’s largest bank by both market capitalisation 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 Chain’s operations.” “VeChain is renowned for creating a powerful public provenance blockchain that can be used to combat counterfeit luxury goods. As livestock ownership and owners’ data remains on the Sentinel Chain, livestock, 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.”

Sunny Lu, the CEO of VeChain and Roy Lai, the CEO of Sentinel Chain had the following to say about their partnership:

“VeChain’s collaboration with Sentinel Chain represents a new chapter in inclusive finance. Our solutions will build positive social outcomes in ASEAN — by using Blockchain & IoT to lay sound foundational digital infrastructure which will support new data-centric business models.” Sunny Lu, CEO, VeChain. “Sentinel Chain’s partnership with VeChain will preserve the right of every individual, particularly the rural unbanked and underserved — to have full access to quality financial services such as livestock insurance and microfinance.” Roy Lai, CEO, Sentinel Chain.

In addition to the partners mentioned above, Sentinel Chain has entered into a partnership with Cloudwell. CloudWell is a fintech company headquartered in Bangladesh which facilitates instant payment services for milk supply and has access to over 300,000 farmers. 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.

And lastly, Sentinel Chain has created an ambassador network of worldwide influencers to promote Sentinel´s vision. So far two impressive ambassadors have joined their network, Cetalin Ivan and Bernardo Corti.

The prestigious role of a Sentinel Chain Ambassador means he or she carries the commitment to champion the mission of financial inclusion and contribute his or her expertise to improve the lives of the unbanked through the technology of Sentinel Chain — A representive from Sentinel Chain.

Cetalin Ivan is a member of the European Parliament for Romania and Bernardo Corti is the Co-founder of Cryptologic and CEO of BitSign. They both will be assisting in spreading the Sentinel project around in Europe and the Latin American region, while establishing firm networks.

Team:

In total Sentinel Chain consists of 9 people. It is a team with a wide specter of experience and knowledge. Noteworthy members of the team are:

Roy Lai is the CEO and founder of Sentinel Chain. He has experience in the banking industry and has created payment solutions and micro financing infrastructures. Roy implemented FAST , which is a national real-time networking connecting 14 banks in Singapore. He also spends his time teaching Blockchain Programming and smart contracts at the Singapore University of Social Sciences.

is the CEO and founder of Sentinel Chain. He has experience in the banking industry and has created payment solutions and micro financing infrastructures. Roy implemented , which is a national real-time networking connecting 14 banks in Singapore. He also spends his time teaching Blockchain Programming and smart contracts at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. Zann Kwan is a foundation member and has been a FinTech entrepreneur in bitcoin and blockchain technology since 2013. She is one of the pioneers in the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem in Singapore and took the lead in the implementation and launch of the first ever bitcoin ATM in Singapore and the asian market.

In addition to the a outstanding team, Sentinel Chain boasts a impressive advisory board:

Bo Shen is the the founding partner of Fenbushi Capital (with Vitalik Buterin ) and BlockAsset. Fenbushi Capital is best known for its involvement and funding of the crypto sphere and seeks to to accelerate the inevitable future of blockchain economy by supporting as many companies as possible. Fenbushi Capital has experienced partners in both traditional finance and the blockchain sphere.

is the the founding partner of Fenbushi Capital (with ) and BlockAsset. Fenbushi Capital is best known for its involvement and funding of the crypto sphere and seeks to to accelerate the inevitable future of blockchain economy by supporting as many companies as possible. Fenbushi Capital has experienced partners in both traditional finance and the blockchain sphere. David Lee has experience from the fintech and blockchain-space in Asia, as well as Silicon Valley. He is the co-founder of BlockAsset. He has previously invested in blockchain projects such as Zcash, OmiseGo, Qtum and TenX.

For all team members and advisory board, please visit Sentinel Chain´s website.

Outlook:

Sentinel Chain is a refreshing and robust project that is taking the first step towards financial inclusion for everyone in the world, which is exactly why bitcoin and blockchain was created. I myself believe in this project and am looking forward to the day when i can become part of Sentinel Chain´s ecosystem and get to know unbanked and underbanked farmers on the other side of the globe that may need funding.

Unfortunately, Sentinel Chain´s whitelist has been filled and the ICO is going to end on the 8th of March. However, Sentinel Chain´s tokens will hit various exchanges during Q2 of 2018. Stay tuned!