For 2 years, the team at ShuttleOne has been building towards a token economy where it algins the interests of our team, shareholders, liquidity suppliers and the business and product. We are bent not to repeat the boom and bust cycles that saw so many tokens fall into the abyss of “just another speculative” asset.

Small Market Cap & Low Circulating supply

It is imperative to note, ShuttleOne has not raised monies as a project via a token sale. We are very fortunate to have the support of equity investors in the past 2 years in our seed round. Some of whom are notable in the crypto industry amongst our angels include:

1. Maker Ecosystem Growth Holdings Inc.
2. Coinshares
3. CMT Digital
4. Andromeda Capital
5. Sirius Venture Capital

Therefore, ShuttleOne had the free will to design and model a token that is free of distractions to produce a crypto product that’s bridging the real world. We are also able to allow $SZO to be in the hands of the right token holders.

As we get closer to the end of January 2021 when we are targetted to list, the current circulating supply of $SZO can be calculated as:

where

n = unlocked $SZO tokens earmarked for listing and liquidity forming purposes

k = $SZO rewards withdrawn by liquidity suppliers

As such, the tokens and its segregation can be found on our smart contract on etherscan.

The current $SZO that has been generated by liquidity suppliers (k) stand at $SZO 789.5543988

The current $SZO that has been earmarked for liquidity forming and listing purposes can be found in these two smart contracts.

https://etherscan.io/token/0x6086b52Cab4522b4B0E8aF9C3b2c5b8994C36ba6?a=0x14ce094bd43c7c254745de419a59867dd2d74ce3

https://etherscan.io/token/0x6086b52Cab4522b4B0E8aF9C3b2c5b8994C36ba6?a=0xe55175344973157a97aa5f6c8902b6fc39fd090f

In total it stands at $SZO 6,763,000.

With our total hardcap at $SZO 230,000,000, the number of tokens in circulation stands at 2.9% of supply at the day of listing.

Burning Mechanism in the $SZO Ecosystem

More than often, a burn and mint mechanism is good hygiene in cryptoeconomics. Token supply is burnt from the hardcap to ensure that the supply of tokens are properly regulated. In the SZO ecosystem, we’ve tied this into how our business and product functions.

Consider this transaction in our trade financing product:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x9f0b993de51b80ccc59f7e6b3e107bb75822b81e4381214c13b688f5a90d86cf

1. A merchant applies for a loan and was approved for $DAI 2,892
2. Merchant pays for loan application by swapping $DAI for $SZO 468
3. $SZO 468 is sent to 0x000000000000 to burn, forever taking it out of supply

This is how the token is designed to function, which brings together the alignment of interests of all our stakeholders.

At ShuttleOne, we believe in that properly designed cryptoeconomy will be the transformation that we’ve been looking for to apply and align interests to real world problems.

$SZO & ShuttleOne — DeFi for the Real World

Many a time, crypto companies create products solely for the crypto industry. On the other hand, traditional finance scoffs at the possibility of crypto ever seeing the light of day.

One would only have to follow our twitter and telegram announcement channel to see that the ShuttleOne.Network has been in action for quite sometime. If you are looking to see how you may engage with ShuttleOne in the decentralized world, head over to our guides.

With $SZO regulating and aligning the interests of all the stakeholders to conduct a proper DeFi bridge into the real world, $SZO and ShuttleOne has supported more than 3000 Small & Medium Sized businesses where more than US$30,000,000 of assets has applied for borrowing across in South East Asia and at the same time providing our partners by bridging the onchain value of ethereum to the benefits of these businesses.

For more information:

Connect with us on Telegram
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Get educated with our Guides

$SZO: 3 Things You Need to Know about the ShuttleOne Token was originally published in ShuttleOne on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As we moved into the final quarter of 2020, ShuttleOne’s quest in South East Asia is strengthened with new equity investments from three stellar investors from the west.

CMT Digital

ShuttleOne has always been interested in working with thoughtful and strategic investors that we can call partners.

Today we are pleased to announce that CMT Digital, the Chicago-based investment firm focused on blockchain technology and cryptoasset ventures, has made a strategic investment in our firm.

“CMT Digital’s investment in ShuttleOne validates our novel blockchain-enabled technology and the potential of this growing industry in South East Asia. We are thrilled to be to be working alongside CMT as we continue our momentum forward.” — HongZhuang Lim, CEO ShuttleOne

CMT Digital has a significant portfolio of investments in well-established crypto-focused firms, in addition to early stage companies that are building the infrastructure for this growing industry and advancing key use cases. The team at CMT Digital, led and founded by Colleen Sullivan, takes pride in working closely with founders and has specific expertise in the regulatory environment which impacts our work in the age of creating programmable money. Before founding CMT Digital, Colleen was a practicing attorney and spent much of her career working closely with companies operating in the regulated financial services space globally.

“ShuttleOne’s unique blockchain-enabled mobile banking and risk assessment technology has potential to address longstanding institutional pain points while enabling increased financial access for residents across South East Asia,” said Colleen Sullivan, CEO of CMT Digital.

“We are happy to partner with HongZhuang and the purpose-driven team at ShuttleOne as they continue to scale the company.”

Coinshares Ventures

CoinShares’ mission is to expand access to the digital asset ecosystem while serving as trusted partners for our clients. They believe that Bitcoin and blockchain networks are landmark innovations that will fundamentally reshape the global financial system, and that investors should be able to participate in this transformation. They achieve this mission by providing institutional-grade investments products and services for digital asset investors. The CoinShares Group is a pioneer in digital asset investing and manages hundreds of millions in assets on behalf of a global investor base, with offices in Jersey, Stockholm, London, and New York. CoinShares Ventures is the venture capital arm of the CoinShares Group, and manages a family of funds for external investors.

We are excited to work with Zhuang and the S1 team to build a suite of financial products and services accessible to a wide audience of borrowers, lenders, and governments in South East Asia, a region of the world poised for tremendous economic growth. — Meltem Demirors, Chief Strategy Officer

In 2015, Coinshares’ flagship product Bitcoin Tracker One (XBT Provider) became the first bitcoin-referenced security available on a regulated exchange when it listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. In 2017, Ether Tracker One became the first ether-referenced security available on a regulated exchange when it listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. In 2019, Litecoin Tracker One became and XRP Tracker One became the first litecoin-referenced and XRP-referenced securities available on a regulated exchange in the EU when they listed on the Nordic Growth Market. The Certificates are available and traded in the same manner as any other share or instrument listed on their respective exchanges.

ShuttleOne and I are humbled by the investments from Coinshares whose team are pioneers in the digital asset financial services space in Europe. It will help ShuttleOne and South East Asia develop a fledging DeFi space to create not only innovate blockchain products but that is regulatory compliant for the real world. — HongZhuang Lim, CEO ShuttleOne

Charles Songhurst

Charles Songhurst is a founding partner of Katana Capital, a long-short equity hedge fund. He also runs the Songhurst Group, which holds assets in a variety of private companies. He invested in ShuttleOne as an angel in this round.

Charles ran corporate strategy for Microsoft and focused on partnering and M&A. He was involved in the Yahoo acquisition and commercial deal, and the Skype acquisition. Before running corporate strategy, Charles was focused on the emergence of Google and the growth of the search industry.

Prior, Charles was an analyst at McKinsey & Company in London. Charles received a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University in politics, philosophy, and economics.

We look forward to engage Charlie in his extensive experience he has in Silicon Valley with Microsoft and Google. His wisdom and guidance will provide valuable insights to build a global company that is innovative and competitive in nature. We thank Charlie in making a bet on ShuttleOne. — HongZhuang Lim, CEO

CMT Digital, Coinshares and Charlie joins the captable with our earlier investors Sirius Venture Capital, Andromeda, Maker Ecosystem Growth Holdings, XSQ Digital and our angels.

It is an honour and our pleasure for ShuttleOne to work alongside our shareholders to further our mission on the blockchain and digital currency.

For More Information :

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Guides

Welcome CMT Digital, Coinshares & Charles Songhurst Onboard the Shuttle was originally published in ShuttleOne on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The ShuttleOne SpacePods, the liqudity mining program of the SZO Token launches today 3rd October 2020 (1400hrs GMT +8, 0600hrs UTC) as previously announced.

1. The ShuttleOne SpacePods Mainnet

The mainnet can be found here in this URL. Please take note of the URL and not fall prey to malware or phishing.

For clarity and transparency the URL is as follows:

https://shuttleone.network/mainnet/

For a detailed Guide to how to Supply & Remove Liquidity please refer to this page.

2. SZO Liquidity Event — 25th October 2020

As the SZO token goes into circulation, we have earmarked to start trading on the 25th of October 2020. Details of the how this is happening can be found in the previous announcement.

3. Commitment to Fair Launch

ShuttleOne is commited to a fair launch. Please read about what are our intents to launch the SZO Token is about.

Another important factor to note:

THERE IS NO TOKEN SALE. THE ONLY AVENUE TO GENERATE SZO TOKENS IS TO SUPPLY LIQUIDITY TO UNLOCK THE TOKENS.

As the token goes into circulation, before the Liquidity Event, we will be publishing lock contract addresses that will manage the timelock on the allocated amount of tokens to ensure transparency and clarity to the community.

Where can i find out more information?

You may find out more information from these sources of reading

ShuttleOne.Network Guide

ShuttleOne GitHub

SZO Audit By PeckShield (April 2020)

SZO Regulatory Legal Opinion

Where can i contact the team?

Telegram
Twitter

We would like to thank the many community members who has responsed publicly and privately to our earlier announcement and distribution schedules. In this write up, we will layout our launch plans.

I urge you to read our Guides for more information on token, risks and the business.

The Launch: 3rd October 2020 (1400hrs GMT+8, 0600hrs UTC)

Yield farming for SZO will commence from 14oohrs GMT+8 / 0600hrs UTC. From 3rd October 2020, all 3 pools in Dai, USDC and USDT will open for the supplying of liquidity. This will be done through the ShuttleOne SpacePods.

We will announce the URL for this to be conducted a couple of hours to the launch time.

To understand how to provide liquidity please refer to the ShuttleOne Guide on Supplying & Removing Liquidity.

The Liquidity Event: 25th October 2020 (1400hrs GMT+8, 0600hrs UTC)

Roughly 2 weeks after the launch, the Project team will add SZO tokens and 100ETH (subjected to change) liquidity into a Uniswap pool.

SZO will hence commence trading from the above mentioned time.

Of Governance, NFT Trading & Gamifying Liquidity: December 2020

To enhance SZO’s utility and use cases, we will be introducing ShuttleOne’s governance for SZO Holders. While this is still a module in its infancy, I’d like to run thru some of the benefits & responsibilities of SZO Holders should you choose to participate in governance:

1. Potentially sharing ecosystem transaction fees paid out in SZO from our network of products.
2. Potentially securing our portfolio of loans disbursed against defaults using the value of SZO staked to mitigate risk of concentration in exchange for rewards.
3. Potentially sharing a greater APY% generated from real world assets that ShuttleOne will onboard strategically in the future.

NFT & Gamifying Liquidity

To enhance community interaction, ShuttleOne is introducing a set of items that users are able to mix and match to achieve certain socio-economic set of goals:

1. To better credit scores in borrowing.
2. To group like minded community token holders to achieve higher economic benefits together (think of it as a clan grouping for stronger benefits).
3. To vote for certain community changes proposed by the project.

Token holders who earned a certain level of SZO will be granted special permissions in the protocol and rewards. Consequently, SZO holders help secure the network against defaults up much like a blanket of insurance against a portfolio of borrowings.

Token Holders will be able to interact with these conditions and avatars on testnet soon and we hope to release these on mainnet around December 2020.

For More Information :

Telegram
Twitter
Guides

Throughout the past 2 years in building, we pride ourselves with updating the community through product execution and revenue related milestones.

It is time, to explain myself to you the community and reader, why and how are we launching SZO.

#1 Distribution: SZO is Fair Launch

If you’d read about ShuttleOne and our developments over the course of the past 2 years, you’d realise that ShuttleOne has operated in the blockchain space for a while. First off, there is NO TOKEN SALE. We are not raising money for operations by selling a token. We are designing an economy for real impact in business and incentivising our community. Please read on if you are interested.

As a founder, I have to balance token distribution with the following categories in mind:

1. Community (past beta testers, liquidity suppliers, future holders)
2. ShuttleOne’s Business (facilitating lending and value transfers)
3. Equity Backers
4. The Team

While there are not many (good) models to follow, of late I took a leaf from Fair Launch Capital’s guide to what is a fair launch.

I’ve designed the distribution of tokens to follow the first 2 principles. However, to balance The Team and Equity Backers, I’ve decided to allocate some tokens to the 2 segments. Here’s how the distribution looks like:

Equal Participation in Tokens
Team & Equity Investors 13.59% SZO
One thing is for certain, there is no early access nor favourable pricing that would ensue the Team and Equity Backers whose value is locked for a minimum of 2 years and total emissions will be quartely thereafter effectively aligning interests in this group for 4 years from the day of listing.

Who Are the VCs?
The VCs that supported ShuttleOne in 2019’s seed round are Rakasasa (a south east asian investment holding group), Andromeda Capital, Sirius Venture Capital, Coinshares, Maker Ecosystem Growth Holdings, Inc and 1 other Angel Investor as of writing.

As you can see (later on in this post), the % of tokens allocated to the team and investors are almost equal with timelocked alignment.

Earning The Network
Community: Early Beta Testers 13.58% SZO
For past beta testers (these are a group of people who has supported the early revisions of the product), we’ve placed an allocation of 13.58% SZO tokens locked for 9 months. They would also need to earn the tokens by supplying liquidity into the ShuttleOne.Network to unlock these pool of tokens. If the early beta testers do not claim their tokens by providing liquidty into the pools, the tokens after 9 months will be shifted to the Liquidity Supplier Incentives Category.

Community: Liquidity & Future Holders 14.91% SZO
In our modelling of scenarios, to the business and how potentially our business may evolve, liquidity supplying into the ShuttleOne.Network is crucial for not only us (as a company) but also for token holders.

At this point, the above 3 segments of supply and distribution of the token looks pretty fair ain’t it?

Which leads us to #2.

#2 Utility: SZO is a Design of Economies

DeFi has innovated a crazy pain point of legacy fintechs, banks and the lending business. For these incumbents, liquidity is always a huge issue. P2P lenders, lending companies and even banks’ first and foremost issue is always — where do we find liquidity?

For companies in the DeFi space, it is not so much where can we find liquidity but how fast can the liquidity be utilized? Secondly, how high a quality of that utilization (i.e how credible is the borrower, what are the assets pledged etc).

In the SZO economy, every transaction initiated by the user in our products mints and burns SZO. Think about it as crypto is innovating the API-call revenue model for softwares.

Demand Side Economics
As a holder of SZO, as long as our business is running the interactions to our smart contracts that powers the products (from remittance, risk scoring, applying for a loan) mints SZO to incentivise holders by burning a portion and rewarding liquidity providers with the excess SZO. Should there be no excess SZO, one can be sure it goes out of circulation (trust the code!).

Which leads us into the next utility of the token.

An Incentive for Liquidity Supply
Therefore, to obtain SZO, a user needs to supply liquidity into our liquidity pools to maintain, and support the business in real world assets.

The token price appreciates (or depreciates) as more liquidity is supplied, more business is done and more tokens are mint, burnt and rewarded to suppliers.

I’d like to supplement this with a flywheel of how token and business aligns in interest.

In this pictorial presentation, on a high level, the interests of liquidity suppliers, token holders and the business will be properly aligned.

Then Why the Heck are there 57.91% of Unminted Tokens. WTF is that?

Precisely as I first pointed in the first segments of this post, 57.91% of tokens are unminted as it only comes into circulation when the business moves. Users of our products in demand-side markets calls the smart contracts (and pays for services) in SZO for these services rendered by ShuttleOne.

This means, IF the business and our products does not move, a huge portion of tokens DO NOT GET CIRCULATED. This is crucial as we answer the premined portion from the ghosts of 2017-ICO led frenzy. Lots of projects shifts, transfers and even dumps tokens onto the community because their products are not in place or simply, just simply — it is hard to build a product.

ShuttleOne aligns interest of our community, equity investors, business, liquidity suppliers and token holders beautifully in one carefully designed token model.

#3 ShuttleOne: DeFi for the Real World

I’ve been full time for about 4 years in this industry, I’ve heard and seen so many broken promises and also experienced the highs of where the industry brings.

If we were to be taken seriously, and to attract more capital for innovation in the blockchain space and (do I dare say) compete with the incumbent financial institutions the value that we create on this so-called blockchain ledger. The products, business and tokens needs to impact people, businesses and the bottomlines of the real world. It is time, we moved on from the foodcoins and back to why is there even a crypto industry in the first place.

These are also the reasons why, we are not doing an ICO, we are not raising monies by selling a token. I focus on the business, the design of economy and making sure this shuttle impacts the real world.

These are what drives me when I design SZO, build ShuttleOne and hopefully, you the reader would join us on the Shuttle to impact where it is needed the most — supplying liquidity and earning SZO.

More details of the launch will be announced in the coming days.

For More Information:

Telegram
Twitter
Guides

Announcing The ShuttleOne Token was originally published in ShuttleOne on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

ShuttleOne has been building efficient value transfer mechanisms, alternative financial networks and financial tools in the digital space. Over the past year in building, it has become an unofficial ethos of our engineering team to Automate Everything Finance.

Blockchain & Digital Assets in the Fight Against COVID19

The blockchain industry especially digital assets always had a lot of criticisms. We faced many external negatives and not to mention the infighting typical of early stage industries. Nay-sayers, unbelievers, politics — you name it. However one of the biggest narrative we always get questioned is — how does this apply to the real world?

This time, the blockchain industry comes together. ShuttleOne together with our friends and partners deploys crucial technologies to support the very industries and the veins of global logistics to get value and supplies to the fight against COVID19.

Supporting South East Asia’s #1 Grocery Platform

HappyFresh is the leading e-grocery platform in South East Asia.

Headquartered in Singapore and operating in 3 key capital markets in Bangkok, Malaysia and Indonesia, HappyFresh saw their riders and shoppers operating at almost full capacity as South East Asia undergoes partial or total lockdowns.

We need heroes to help shop and deliver groceries. This job has never been an easy one but giving the current situation, it is indeed a challenging mission to take on.

Our shoppers and drivers have been working around the clock serving our communities and to ensure you can #stayathome while we #shopforyou. — Guillem Segarra (CEO, HappyFresh)

HappyFresh was able to utilize financial instruments via Tinlake and allowed them to be nimble in capital deployment by keeping digital assets in the ShuttleOne wallet allowing them to decide which markets they are serving needs efficient and fast capital injection through the ShuttleOne Network.

Transforming Traditional Businesses

Chow Feng International, typically a timber manufacturer caught by the Movement Control Order (Malaysia’s version of a lockdown) was hard pressed to figure how would their factories function during these very strange times.

Similar to HappyFresh, Chow Feng’s management obtained a loan via Tinlake and disbursed payments to masks manufacturing companies to secure much needed supplies of equipment during this intense period within the ShuttleOne network.

All under 1 hour, with compliant and risk assessed loan disbursement.

Donation & Disaster Relief

Proponents of digital assets and the blockchain industry has been touting for an open and transparent “alternate” financial system. At ShuttleOne, it is not our philosophy to disrupt but to compliment. We only want effective, compliant value transfers to take place ensuring efficient capital allocation.

With the MakerDao Foundation’s value stablecoin, Dai, we are able to facilitate remittances for Donation & Disaster Relief.

In these times of crisis, the network effects of the blockchain industry comes together in bringing much needed value into the frontlines.

ShuttleOne’s CTO Samret W. supported his local efforts in Thailand masks donation in February 2020 in collaboration with a mask manufacturer.

Supporting Crucial Supply Chains

In an earlier post “From Blockchain to the Supermarkets”, Tinlake and MakerDao sprints in support of the frontlines by supporting the delivery of 200,000 face masks from China to Panama through open and transparent financial systems through trade financing. ShuttleOne is proud to be counted amongst these wizards of the blockchain with a heart in these times of crisis.

Standing Firm in Mission Critical Financial Services

Blockchain cannot do this alone.

We stand stronger in the digital services we create by facilitating markets globally together. Blockchain and Digital Assets heralds a new era where, South East Asia becomes the deployment of crucial technologies of Maker’s protocol in DeFi, Tinlake’s asset-backed lending protocol and ShuttleOne’s fintech blockchain in rapid value transmission.

Crypto comes out fighting. Our network never sleeps. Because the fight against COVID19, the desire to flatten the curve, and seeing the light and the end of the tunnel never diminishes.

Let us know what you think?

Telegram: https://t.me/shuttleone
Twitter: @shuttle_one
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shuttleoneasia

Building ShuttleOne Series 2: Standing Firm in Mission Critical Financial Services was originally published in ShuttleOne on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dear ShuttleOne Focus Group User,

I would like to thank you for being in this early test group since 2019 which has given us much valuable feedback on how to build a product that is truly of needs for the user.

Fortunately, that program has to end as we come to the tail end of our tests and are releasing a fully updated version on the 1st of March 2020, 1200hrs Singapore Time GMT+8.

Here are some things you need to note going forward.

TLDR

1. You need to Create or Restore Your Wallet in our New Update
2. This must be done before the 1st of March 2020, 1200hrs Singapore Time GMT+8
3. ShuttleOne is doing this to improve our User Interface and User Experience for Wallet Restoration going forward

When the new version is updated, we have wiped out the information from the earlier tests versions which were stored on your phone. Your funds are safe on the blockchain and the private keys in your custody.

YOU NEED TO RESTORE OR CREATE A NEW WALLET

IF YOU DON’T REMEMBER YOUR SEED PHASE YOU NEED TO DO THIS BEFORE THE UPDATE

1. Tap on the “All wallets”
2. Select “Ethereum”
3. Select “+”

4. Select “Create New Wallet”

Please note down the 12 word seed phases (write it somewhere and store it safe)

You will need to use these 12 word seed phases to “restore wallet” after the full version is updated on the 1st of March 2020, 1200hrs Singapore Time GMT+8.

IF YOU HAVE YOUR 12 WORD SEED PHASE

If you do remember your 12 word seed phase. There is no action required. When the full version is updated, simply “restore wallet” by following steps 1,2,3 and click on “restore wallet” and enter your 12 word seed phases.

Here is a video for your reference on the steps needed.

How to Create & Restore your ShuttleOne Wallet

Refresh the wallet to show your balances by pulling down the screen.

You will need to transfer the funds from your old wallet to the new one (which you have noted down your NEW seed phase)

If you have ERC20 tokens previously in the wallet, simply input the smart contract details of the token and add tokens again just like you have done before.

Transfer your funds from your old wallet to the new one by clicking “send” and “receive” from your old and new wallets.

There is no action needed your wallet will restore to all your balances automatically.

As you have seen by now, the above processes are not user friendly and creates friction for any user, even more so for the users who have never interacted with blockchain wallets previously.

In this next update, ShuttleOne is making it easier for users to “restore” their wallets should they lose their phones. The whole process described earlier will be automated.

Video Instruction:

How to Create & Restore your ShuttleOne Wallet

Telegram Help Group:

https://t.me/shuttleone

ShuttleOne is an integrated fintech blockchain platform that delivers the experience of remittance, loans and provides for a virtual savings account to our ecosystem of partners and users in Southeast Asia. As we envisioned the early semblances of what our product will look like, we took on ourselves to reach a group of users that the blockchain and digital assets will have greatest impact in.

In our July & August updates, we figured that the folks in the rural regions of Indonesia would be one of these group of users. Nothwithstanding that, while yes, the blockchain does have strong impacts onthese groups of users, we quickly realized we were at the wrong place! Social demographics of these rural areas are usually more elder folks and the younger ones. The able bodied economically viable adults are usually in cities such as Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong within ASEAN.

Success through Collaboration

ShuttleOne is founded on several philosophies, one of such is strong collaboration. We were fortunate enough, some of the largest financial institutions within South East Asia would give us a stab in potentially transforming their businesses digitally. We are unable to name the collaboration publicly at this stage due to regulatory and privacy agreements in place. We do beg our readers’ pardon for this.

The Shuttle Pilot Program

In terms of our technology roadmap, ShuttleOne applies a highly pragmatic approach in what the market present and future (as we hypothesize) needs. This is done through extensive consultation with partners within the space. As such, we’ve over the course of 2019 built a rather extensive pilot program for both partners and users to understand and interact with ShuttleOne.

As we trialed early versions of ShuttleOne in our earlier pilots where we did transactions of varying sizes internally, we were challenged to do a bigger pilot test with our partners over the course of October to December 2019. The first layer to a successful redesign of financial infrastructure is access to capital and value transmission. It is within this backdrop, we envision the first layer to attack remittance.

The Pilot Design

Working with financial institutions is never a straightforward affair. Apart of regulatory concerns, where our team from day 1 envisioned to comply with, we quickly realized, their understanding of the blockchain and digital assets needs a quick “software update”. To bring the blockchain into mass adoption, we needed to balance these needs:

1. Financial Institution (they either need to make more money, or reduce costs)
2. Users (benefits)
3. ShuttleOne (we are not a charity)
4. Regulators (benefits to the country, jobs, bad actors etc)

How ShuttleOne Handles Data

Data is a contentious issue, in future internet businesses, and especially so in the age of the internet of finance, how an organization handle data is of top priority. While how ShuttleOne handles data is poised for a much longer post, for the sake of this one, all KYCed users data were taken out by our financial institution partner before providing us with the financial transactions for us to conduct this pilot. In ShuttleOne, we view the European Union’s key laws and policies as one of the highest standards. We’ve built our technology with the philosophy of “private but not secret” to comply with laws of the highest standards. We note, in the latest update of the 5th Anti-Money Laundering Directive from the European that:

Virtual currency exchange platforms convert real currencies into virtual currencies, and the 5MLD will clamp down on virtual currency regulations to help combat money laundering and terrorism financing.

With 5ALMD, cryptocurrencies will face regulation for the first time. Like traditional financial institutions do, cryptocurrency exchanges will now have to submit suspicious activity reports and perform customer due diligence. So, if cryptocurrency exchanges know or suspect any money laundering or terrorist financing, it is their duty to report this to authorities.

The Pilot Program: Hypothesis

After obtaining data, we came up with a few hypothesis for testing before we ran the pilot on the blockchain.

1. Utilizing the blockchain as a distributed ledger and digital assets will bring down costs of transactions to 3% or below, while maintaining the average margin of our partners at 1.5%
2. Cost of Capital for our partner reduces against current costs
3. Users are able to obtain their remittances finality within 1hr in the destination country
4. ShuttleOne Oracles are able to handle large amounts of data in real time

The Pilot Program: Numbers & Data

1. Number of Transactions: 25,806
2. Average Transaction Value: US$338.16
3. Gas Costs: US$232.54
4. ShuttleOne Wallets Opened: 3687
5. Contract Address: 0x0b2a0b8d37261b0e838b56d185616b80c89060d8
6. Blockchain Used: Ethereum Kovan

The Results: 3 Impacts the Blockchain Brings to the Industry of Remittance

Lower Cost for Users

The predatory nature of remittance is a widely publicized one. In ASEAN, as from our earlier research, the average fees regionally is estimated at 7.3%. In our pilot test, we evidently show case we alongside our partners are able to keep costs at 3% for the users. This is important as it balances ShuttleOne’s business (to be profitable) and also it allows the partner to see its other potential impacts which can benefit their users.

Reduction in Cost of Capital

In fact, in our dealings with these financial institutions, we realized its not entirely their fault for the issue of high fees. These FIs, they too want to cut costs for their users to provide a more competitive service. They too, want to reduce their burden in their cost of capital. Remember, the foundation of a remittance house is their ability to get foreign currencies at a much cheaper rate and usually this is done in bulk. This is also why smaller and medium sized players tend to charge more, its simple economics — they don’t have the demand or supply to reduce their cost of capital. The notion of too many middlemen also stems to increase the cost of capital

In ShuttleOne’s ecosystem, they only ever have to deal with one base rate. In this pilot test our oracles are programmed to the $Dai USD rate. We utilize $Dai as a stablecoin and we deal with the supply of $Dai also from regulated sources.

Within the ShuttleOne system, our partners were able to be more sensitive to their cost of capital and settlement needs internationally as they are exposed to lower forex risks in general.

Quicker Settlement, Faster Remittance

In this pilot, while we did not simulate destination country withdrawals, the average time to remit monies was reduced to an average of around 18 seconds (wallet to wallet). This can be further reduced should our technical team be able to optimize transaction blocks within our value transmission mechanism. In practice, another partner at the destination country will be notified of a transaction and the user (also KYCed) withdraws the local currency on the other side as soon as the transaction hits their wallets.

What’s Next?

As we move forwards to Phase 2 of the Shuttle Pilot Program, we are beginning to do larger real money transaction. It is highly evident in this pilot test the impacts of the blockchain is real and impactful, we also concluded that our systems are able to run large amounts of transactions and are all systems go. We look forward to what’s coming up next in 2020 as we progress.

In 2019, we would like to thank the guidance of our supporters, the angels and institutions that have provided valuable business and technical advice. Without these insights, it’s highly likely we will be a headless chicken running around.

In 2020, we look to bring the benefits of the blockchain in ASEAN to more partners and also users alike. If you would like to get in touch with us to see how our products and services impact your ecosystem and businesses, please get in touch below:

Telegram: https://t.me/shuttleone
Twitter: @shuttle_one
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shuttleoneasia

The Shuttle Pilot: 3 Impacts The Blockchain Brings to the Remittance Industry was originally published in ShuttleOne on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.