What is Freight Trust (EDI)?

A Unique Network Transport Infrastructure

Think of Freight Trust Blockchain Network as a VAN or Value Added Network

The Freight Trust VAN is based off Hyperledger Besu, a Java Client that is EVM compliant, meaning it can connect to the main ethereum network or you can set up a “permissioned” network, which is what the Freight Trust Network is. They use the $EDI Token to establish a market-based price for our transaction pricing. If interested in the pricing mechanisms please read the omnibus documentation.

Unique Value Proposition

They extrapolate 3 mathematical properties that legal contracts have. Then use these 3 mathematical properties to design “smart contract primitives”. These primitives are then mapped to existing EDI formats that companies use to communicate with each other. The mappings enable the raw EDI transaction to then become a smart contract.
Based on the mathematical properties (and some additional software), they can enable raw EDI transactions to become actual smart contracts, based on if the End User (by default it’s just raw message), wants to be able to do something besides sending a raw EDI message in order to enable that functionality.

That is what makes the Freight Trust system unique in the sense that they can take normal EDI transactions and enable existing business workflows to be leveraged into new functionality, without having to migrate to a new system or front end user interface.

What’s been going on so far?

Freight Trust has been putting in some major development over the last few months. It’s safe to say the decision for Sam to part with the old Block Array team was probably one of the best he’s ever made. More details can be found regarding that below.

You can see the progress of development on Freight Trust’s Github repository (links below). The Freight Trust Network has been up and running for a few months already.

There is a rumor going around that Freight Trust may be in the final process of signing on a new deal with a big player. If true this company has connections all across the world in the freight logistics industry. For 50 years this company has been a provider of research and consulting services to the maritime and shipping industry across an international network of offices in London, Delhi, Singapore and Shanghai.

EDI has been listed on 3 exchanges in just a little over a month. One more exchange listing with-in the next week or so. With Uniswap also on the horizon.

Freight Trust has also onboarded a new advisor, Ron Volpe who just joined from TradeShift. Ron’s experience as Chief of Supply Chain at TradeShift and Kraft (Global Head) is invaluable in the efforts to sell to enterprise clients. Ron has successfully led and transformed very large and global CPG supply chains from manufacturer (Kraft Foods) to shelf (Coles Australia) across over 30 countries.

Baseline Protocol

Freight Trust has been working alongside Baseline for a couple months now. Freight Trust will officially be part of the Baseline Committee’s on the next onboarding announcement which could be as soon as next month. Unibright has also just recently joined Baseline.

For those of you that are not familiar with Baseline

“That’s the view of a trio of heavy hitters in the enterprise blockchain space: EY, ConsenSys and Microsoft. The group has come up with a new way of using the public ethereum mainnet to connect firms’ internal systems for resource planning. They are calling it the Baseline Protocol.”

Here are some of the major players involved in Baseline.

Baseline Project Governance Board

Name	Organization
Chaals Neville	Enterprise Ethereum Alliance
Dan Burnett	ConsenSys
Tas Dienes	Ethereum Foundation

Baseline Technical Steering Committee

Name	Organization
Brian Chamberlain	ConsenSys
Conor Svensson	Web3Labs
Eric Bravick	Core Convergence
Hudson Jameson	Ethereum Foundation
Johann Eid	Chainlink
Kartheek Solipuram	Ernst & Young
Kyle Thomas	Provide
Nate McKervey	Splunk
Stefan Schmidt	Unibright
Zachary Williamson	Aztec

Baseline Specifications Steering Committee

Name	Organization
Arwin Holmes	Ernst & Young
Bill Gleim	ConsenSys Health
Daniel Norkin	Envision Blockchain
Joerg Roskowetz	AMD
Jon Stevens	Web3Cloud
Joseph Bala	Neocova
Karen Scarborough	BP
Stephan Baur	Kaiser Permanente
Steve Shortt	BP
Yorke Rhodes	Microsoft
Tim Coulter	Truffle

How can logistics companies benefit from using Freight Trust (EDI)?

Existing companies are already using raw EDI messages to communicate. Freight Trust’s value proposition is that they take the existing data the clients are already producing and become the actual “network transport layer” for them to connect to. By joining and using the FT network transport layer (i.e. Freight Trust Blockchain) they get the benefits of interacting with smart contracts and a distributed enterprise network that can provide the same assurances in relation to a service level agreement they would have with Klienschmidt, but at 1/10th the cost.

Staking and Masternodes

Details can be found in the links below
https://freight-chain.github.io/omnibus/blockchain/staking/
https://freight.page.link/nodes

Supply Details

Current MC: $1.1 Million
Max supply: 611,029,679
Circulating supply: 161,000,000
Max amount for staking and rewards: >450,029,679

What Does EDI and VAN Mean in the Shipping World?

EDI - Electronic Data Interchange

Electronic Data Interchange - EDI comprises many types of “messages” which when transmitted between two parties are designed to substitute other forms of data transfer.

VAN - Value Added Network

VAN is essentially a private network provider whereby EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) documents are transmitted and exchanged. In other words, it is a channel of communication to move data from point A to point B.

Comparisons

Here is the biggest competitor in the "normal edi message VAN space" https://www.kleinschmidt.com/ks

Another competitor in the “normal edi message VAN space” https://www.livingstonintl.com/resource/paperless-billing-four-options-livingston-clients/

Freight Trust offers the same service, at a significant cost savings, plus additional functionality (if they want to).

Exchanges EDI is trading on (more to come, much sooner than later)

IDEX - https://idex.market/eth/edi

Probit (BTC pair) - https://www.probit.com/app/exchange/EDI-BTC

Probit (USD pair) - https://www.probit.com/app/exchange/EDI-USDT

Bidesk (BTC pair) - https://www.bidesk.com/exchange/EDI/BTC

Bidesk (USD pair) - https://www.bidesk.com/exchange/EDI/USDT

Uniswap - https://uniswap.exchange/swap?inputCurrency=0x79c5a1ae586322a07bfb60be36e1b31ce8c84a1e

Commodities Exchange

Freight Trust will also be launching their own commodities exchange in the near future. Date TBA.

What happened with Block Array?

Block Array was the original project, after some differences in how to deal with the approaches with the original protocol (i.e. legal recognition of our process) Freight Trust bought them out and moved from Chattanooga, TN to Los Angeles, CA and have since developed further. FT has a new team (contractors) and new advisors. Freight Trust is a new legal entity that acquired the IP from block array inc. Block Array inc, will be officially dissolved this year (2020) and its remaining liabilities discharged. Freight Trust is not Block Array, but does have the same founder (Sam Bacha).

Background on EDI Token

ARY was original token

BOL was swapped for ARY at 1:1

BOL was swapped to EDI for 1:1.35 (see RFC4) - the issue being how pricing works on a per kilobyte basis: EDI Transactions are priced per kilobyte at the rate determined by PEM. PEM is fixed at the same rate as defined in the ethereum yellow paper Designing Smart Contracts With Free Will (A2) - Philip Daian