A Beginner’s guide to TradeFinex: A Blockchain powered P2P Trade & Infrastructure Finance platform
In my evangelizing role for XinFin, I am often asked questions about the hybrid blockchain protocol startup’s P2P trade and infrastructure finance platform, TradeFinex. This document is what I term as a handy guide to TradeFinex for beginers. Let me add that this in no way substitutes any of the existing documentation and notes on XinFin and TradeFinex website. Rather it complements the same — I hope! Also, this is a document which for me is a work in progress and I intend to keep updating the same as the updates come along.
So here goes….. and yes, if you do have any feedback on what you would like to see in such a guide, do let me know, thanks!
Introduction
TradeFinex is a blockchain powered decentralized peer to peer global Trade & Infrastructure Finance platform designed to offer trade and finance instruments of value. Built on open standards, it brings together multiple stakeholders — financiers & investors, buyer, suppliers, government and regulatory bodies — through a decentralized platform.
It is an open API platform that is compatible with legacy systems and ISO 20022. This allows developers to create their own bespoke trade and finance instruments of value. Some of the already existing facets of TradeFinex include Asset/Projects Monitoring, Private Network Interactions, Smart Contracts, Post-Trade Settlements, Counter-Party Risk Mitigation and Increased Liquidity.
It supports decentralized Credit Data as well as KYC Data with zero knowledge proofs. It aims to minimize the global trade finance gap as well as infrastructure deficit by minimizing the process inefficiencies and increasing liquidity by leveraging blockchain technology.
Its key features include decentralized platform, smart contracting, asset tokenization, integrated wallets, real time global and cross border payments and settlements and regulatory sandbox environment — powered by XinFin’s enterprise ready hybrid blockchain protocol. TradeFinex’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) also provide further interoperability with other systems and platforms — thus enriching the whole trade and infrastructure finance ecosystem.
What is the vision of TradeFinex?
TradeFinex envisions an ideal global trade and infrastructure finance platform — one with open standards, seamless connectivity amongst various stake-holders of the ecosystem, a frictionless access to secure Big Data and a free flow of value — efficient management and financing of trade and infrastructure assets and working capital.
The team at XinFin (developers of TradeFinex) does recognize that this can not be achieved singularly through any silo entity, irrespective of its resources. Hence XinFin has taken an open source collaborative approach which includes the following:
A. Open sourced — An open API platform for developers to develop their own solutions, organizations to own their master nodes, trade associations and multilateral institutions to customize, run and manage their own trade finance and infrastructure asset management platforms.
B. Inter operable — Compatible with legacy systems and ISO 20022.
C. Consortium — Proposal for the creation of a Consortium of key stakeholders — global public investors and others — with a shared vision and ambition to participate in the development strategy of this decentralized hybrid blockchain powered global trade and finance platform, The team at XinFin is convinced that the complementing technological, legal, global finance and trading expertise brought in by the Consortium members will accelerate development of this platform as per industry standards and eventual market adoption.
What are the areas that TradeFinex addresses?
With the above vision and collaborative approach, TradeFinex spans the following 5 areas:
A. Trade finance
B. Infrastructure finance
C. Empowering Micro, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) with markets & funds access and liquidity
D. Enabling secondary markets for greater liquidity
E. Data standardization, Sharing and Blockchain interoperability
Here is a brief video with an overview of TradeFinex
How does TradeFinex help address existing challenges in Trade Finance?
Leveraging XinFin’s Hybrid Blockchain technology, TradeFinex brings about
· Secure and transparent commerce amongst trusted participants
· Enhanced access to finance and global biz opportunities
· Reduced costs via process efficiencies and disintermediation
· Process efficiencies — Automated work-flows via cryptographically encrypted smart contract
· Minimized credit risk via immutable rating system, trust, transparency and visibility
· Immutable records and document trail
· Reduced transaction overheads via process efficiencies and disintermediation
· Asset tokenization and Liquidity
· Interoperability with other platforms and systems via a library of TradeFinex APIs
· Digitization and Auditability
· Contractual and Regulatory compliance
How does TradeFinex help address Infrastructure deficit gap?
TradeFinex leverages XinFin’s Hybrid Blockchain technology to automate and streamline infrastructure project finance. Some of the benefits that TradeFinex brings out to address the Infrastructure deficit include:
· Increased Asset accessability and De-risking new infrastructure project finance via Fractionalizing infrastructure assets
Fractionalising enables new investors into the infra market who never would have entered due to current pricing and locked up time frames of infra assets. Investment amounts are smaller and the number of investors large and varied.
· Injecting liquidity via Access to exchange for trading infrastructure assets and ability to sell on secondary market
Existing Infra owners can now fractionalise and sell their yield-generating assets so that they can recapitalise to invest in new infra projects.
· Incubate and accelerate infrastructure pipeline
· Reducing process and cost inefficiencies via Standardizing of contracts and instruments. Smart contracts can remove much of the mundane processes that can be automated. E.g. dividend payments. Processes can also be restructured for efficiency.
· Ongoing management of assets via tracking of infrastructure asset performance data
What are some of the financial instruments currently supported over TradeFinex?
These include Digital Bond, Invoice Factoring and R3 Corda Bridge (coming soon).
· Digital Bond — This blockchain powered platform instrument simplifies and streamlines the entire corporate bond lifecycle. You can create, manage and liquidate bond instruments online. A fully digital blockchain solution helps towards eliminating counter party delays and provides instant settlement. It also increases the market liquidity. Broker-Dealers and Licensed enities can use this Digital Bond platform.
You can access Digital Bond details here.
· Invoice Factoring — This blockchain powered platform instrument equips particpants with an alternative financial marketplace operating in a transparent environment. With more financing options to your unpaid invoice, it provides liquidity into your systems.
You can access details on inFactor, TradeFinex’s invoice factoring instrument here.
· Corda Bridge (coming soon) — The relayer bridge deploys Corda smart contract state to XinFin Network smart contract state. It helps to mitigate counter-party risk by making your financial instruments interoperable and liquid.
You can access Corda Bridge details here.
How do various parties communicate with each other on TradeFinex?
TradeFinex has a user friendly messaging board. Participants can use this messaging feature to chat with each other. They can exchange files, drawings, documents, and other data and information on real-time basis with other parties. Contact information of the registered users will be visible to other registered users — which can also be used for communication.
How do I begin using TradeFinex
TradeFinex is an easy to use platform. Here are a couple of links to get you started
· Video on how to start using TradeFinex
· Detailed steps on getting started with TradeFinex
What are XDC/XDCe Tokens?
The XDC token is the underlying utility token that powers XinFin’s Hybrid Blockchain. The XDC token acts as a settlement mechanism for Decentralized Applications (DApps) like TradeFinex built on the XinFin Hybrid Blockchain. XinFin has also launched an Ethereum token called XDCE that can be traded with XDC utility token at a 1:1 ratio. This gives the token holder flexibility to hold tokens in either form for utility. The ERC-20 token can be swapped for the XDC token at a ratio of 1:1. This swap can be facilitated on the AlphaEx exchange that is compatible with all decentralised exchanges and has a presence in liquidity markets and supports XDC liquidity.
How can I buy XDC/XDCe?
XinFin tokens can be purchased and sold on a number of exchanges using all types of currencies and tokens supported by the exchanges. These exchanges include AlphaEx, Bancor, IDEX, EtherFlyer, KOINOK, ForkDelta and others.
Wallets supporting XDC — Metamask, MyEtherWallet, Eidoo
Here is the list of Exchange and Wallet Partners
What is TradeFinex Community?
Everyone who is interested in TradeFinex platform — in its existing form as well as its potential.
It includes TradeFinex users — either as Beneficiaries or Suppliers or Financiers or as Government and Regulatory authorities as well as anyone who is interested in the platform and the technology behind it. They help to evangelize the same and actively participate in discussions about its future development.
Being an open source, the TradeFinex Community includes Developers who develop various applications — instruments of value — on this platform and also participate in its enhancement and future development. All of TradeFinex code is open source on GitHub and there is an extensive set of developer tools and documentation on the TradeFinex website. There is also a support network of TradeFinex core engineers, as well as a large community of developers, that help each other out. These community members are happy to help new developers get familiar with the technology. In addition, the XinFin Community Bounty Program invites developers and all bug bounty hunters to build DPoS Consensus.
Where can I connect and engage with the TradeFinex Community?
The official TradeFinex community channels are:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tradefinex/
https://twitter.com/TradeFinex
Some Useful links
· TradeFinex Frequently Asked Questions
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