Dear Ambrosus Community. We thank you for your ongoing support and community activities. Below you will find an overview of what our team has been up to recently and also will be able to see some announcements.

1. Overview of companies Ambrosus is currently engaging.

We cannot disclose the names of the companies we are engaging due to NDAs governing our relations. However, the community is expectant to learn more. To be able to give an overview of the scale of our activities, we describe below the profiles of companies we engage. Ambrosus is working towards transforming our engagement or private activities into public partnerships, in order to be able to communicate those to the community. Company A (food retailer, annual revenue 25 billion CHF+), company B (food processing company, annual revenue 2 billion CHF+), company C (cosmetics and fragrances company, annual revenue 4 billion CHF+), company D (food manufacturer, annual revenue 30 billion CHF+), company E (food manufacturer, annual revenue 10 billion CHF+), company F (food manufacturer, annual revenue 3 billion CHF+), company G (agricultural commodities, annual revenue 100 billion CHF+).

The purpose of engaging these companies is to develop experimental designs and pilot projects to establish valuable use-cases for Ambrosus. Our goal is to transform these interactions into public projects. We will keep the community posted on the progress made.

2. New People at Ambrosus.

Mohammed Al Fardan, new Head of the Middle East.

A leading expert in strategy, international business and development, Al Fardan began his career in IBM, Lexmark and Microsoft, driving innovation and growing their reach in the Middle East. For his role in introducing the venture capitals concept to the region, Al Fardan was awarded the Entrepreneur of the Gulf region in 2014. Managing acquisitions and attracting leading ICT firms to operate in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region, Al Fardan also created the concept and strategy for MENA’s ICT hub city, the first fully integrated smart city. A high-profile name in the Middle East, Mohammed Al Fardan is the 7th generation of the Al Fardan family, a prominent trading family in the Arabian Peninsula since 1785. Al Fardan has co-founded and managed a number of innovative international ventures under the Mohammed Al Fardan Group, which is focused on venture capitals, Blockchain, cryptocurrencies, global remittances, digital banking, e-commerce, jewellery, automotive, superyacht management services, trading, travel and tourism, hospitality, information and communication technologies, pharmaceuticals, fragrances, and luxury brands. Currently working on establishing the first smartphone manufacturing facility in Bahrain for the Middle East and Africa to manufacture most of the known brands locally, Al Fardan is introducing initiatives focused on start-ups in the region as well as empowering women, leveraging on his global networks. Mohammed Al Fardan has also created an advanced recruitment portal utilizing artificial intelligence and social media.

Nathalie Kazzi, Interim COO (External Consultant).

Nathalie has over 15 years of international operational leadership and project management experience. She is a founding member and COO of Decisive Wealth in Geneva. Before that, she was a Global Product Manager as SGS, the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company, where she developed and implemented Health & Safety online systems across 126 countries. Earlier, Nathalie was a Project Services Engineer at Shell in the Netherlands and Dubai, and worked on projects in the Middle East and Africa. She holds an MBA from Chicago Booth Business School, a Civil & Environmental Engineering degree, and a Bachelor of Arts in International studies. She has been a certified PMI project management professional since 2008.

Tiphaine Paulliac, Project Manager.

Elodie specializes in food technology and materials science. Most recently she worked as engineer on a joint project between EPFL and Nestle, working on chocolate manufacturing processes and quality assurance. She also worked as Engineer at Centro Premoi Nobel Mario Molina in Chile and worked as scientific researcher at Firmenich, working on encapsulation and delivery systems. Tiphaine holds an MSc in Materials Science and Food Technology, which she obtained at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and Imperial College London.

Elodie Auer, Junior Project Manager (Intern).

She has several years of work experience in hospitality sectors, having worked at Pathe Theaters, Club Med, Movenpick, Geneva International Film Festival. She is currently a student in Hospitality Management at Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne (EHL), world’s number 1 university in hotel management and hospitality.

Clara Buchet, Junior Project Manager (Intern).

She has several years of work experience in hospitality sectors, having worked at Pathe Theaters, Club Med, Movenpick, Geneva International Film Festival. She is currently a student in Hospitality Management at Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne (EHL), world’s number 1 university in hotel management and hospitality.

3. Technology Development

R&D Laboratory in Vaud, Switzerland. We are getting close to launching our R&D laboratory in the Canton of Vaud that will focus on strategic long-term solutions that could underpin the value of Ambrosus ecosystem in the years to come. Currently, many challenges within the supply chain are not solvable without technological advancement, and blockchain technology alone will not be the answer to them. While the detailed overview of the lab mission, activities and objectives will be published separately, some of the topics proposed to be researched there include (no priority in ordering): a) Perishable Products Assessment Techniques; b) Calibration of Sensors; c) Standardisation of Quality Assessment using Distributed Ledger Technologies. We will be posting a more detailed update on the R&D Lab including the information about the first employees of the lab in early December.

Crossroads Browser for Quality-Assured Markets. Our Lead Blockchain Developer Matthew Roberts unveiled an open-source browser for markets for quality-assured products. A detailed description of the technology can be seen in this blog-post. The browser opens new opportunities for people to discover markets for products whose quality is assured by the tools offered as part of Ambrosus ecosystem. The browser brings smart contracts to the next level, permitting to operate in environments with higher uncertainty.

Peer-2-Peer Marketplace and Coffee Pilot. Our team is currently adding different elements to the marketplace. The next functionalities we intend to add to our marketplace are as follows: a) Transferability of Amber (AMB) without the necessity to use ETH by marketplace participants. This can permit faster adoption of AMB as the token of choice for marketplace participants. b) Upload functions for non-sensor generated data. This permits users to validate the quality of their products through documentation or certification uploaded and transparently showcased to all participants. c) Prepay/Escrow functions. In many cases, participants in the marketplace require some sort of escrow function, which we intend to provide.

The marketplace development is influenced by the Coffee pilot project that is ongoing between Africa and China. The features that we are adding at these stages are requested by the participants of the marketplaces, who include producers of coffee in Africa, distributors and transporting companies involved and coffee suppliers and distributors in Hong Kong and China / South East Asia. We drive development for the marketplace through both theoretical findings and practical experiences we are gaining through the conduct of our pilot projects. By early 2018 we intend to publish a more detailed overview of the Coffee Pilot project and the outcomes.

4. Communication and External Events

Ambrosus is not slowing down in its outreach and external communication efforts. Some of the recent milestones achieved:

Reddit Community New Look. Come check out the sleek new look for Ambrosus Reddit Community. Now it’s more fun to discuss the development of our project and new activities!

Exhibitions and Presentations:

Ambrosus is continuing to actively participate in high profile events as exhibitor and presenter. Our most recent events included:

Blockchain Summit Zug (22 November)

FinLantern Forum Lugano (20–21 November)

Decentralized 2017 (2–4 November)

Ambrosus is going to stay on Discord Chat. Following the vote by the online community, 72% of voters preferred Discord to Slack, due to its better security and convenience of use.

We will have more updates and hires and announcements coming up in the next few weeks.

Stay tuned!