The increasing adoption of the blockchain is huge not only for the blockchain industry but also in verticals where the technology is being used to improve processes and efficiency.

One of the biggest verticals set to benefit the most from the blockchain is in logistics and transport management which makes up roughly 13% of the world’s GDP.

This massive figure is not a surprise; transporting goods is the basis of almost every business and as more goods need to be transported, more money needs to be put in logistics and transport to ensure that customers receive their products in time.

Unfortunately, the statement above is easier said than done. Businesses and consumers all around the world are constantly affected by late or inefficient deliveries, a problem that is caused by the lack of proper supply chain control in distribution channels.

One of the biggest contributors to this problem is the use of paper-based records for stages in the distribution process. Paper records are extremely susceptible to disputes and since everything is done manually, things like verifying the delivery of goods according to the agreed terms take a very long time which affects both customers and businesses.

Aside from poor management systems, the presence of middlemen (also known as 3PLs or 4PLs) in combined with the manual processes mentioned above makes the process of delivering goods even more complicated than it already is.

All of the problems mentioned earlier culminates to a point where transactions are delayed beyond levels that businesses can afford to tolerate. This severely affects the liquidity and cash flow of businesses—a situation that is never ideal in our ever advancing world.

Thankfully, the growth of the blockchain has helped tremendously in alleviating the problems plaguing the industry. Leading the pack in improving the industry is the OEL Foundation (Open Logistics Enterprise Foundation), a company set to revolutionize the supply chain with its proprietary blockchain-based solutions.

What is The OEL Foundation?

The OEL Foundation is a Hong Kong-based non-profit organization that aims to remove the dependency on paper records in the supply chain by using the blockchain to save and store records with its open source enterprise architecture.

The organization will utilize the properties of the blockchain to help make disputes a thing of the past by confirming records on the blockchain the moment it is verified e.g after a satisfied business receiving their goods on time.

The OEL Foundation’s solutions are also designed in a such a way that benefits the transport industry as a whole instead of only benefiting one or two major companies.

To achieve its vision, the company will work on three core goals:

Build the OEL Enterprise Architecture

Launch the OPN token

Host the OEL Foundation Alliance

These goals will form an ecosystem supporting decentralized applications (dApps) that allows companies to drastically improve their supply chain with the aid of accurate and indisputable shipment data hence cutting down on costs and inefficiencies.

With the OEL Foundation, businesses can expect to completely remove the dependency on intermediaries in the logistics sector as well as gaining access to increased levels of efficiency, transparency, and costs saving that were lost in the traditional, outdated paper-based system.

Guiding the organization to the top is a team of experienced and renowned individuals in the industry including board members, Max Ward, Nicholas Husson, and Paul Good. With such an experienced team, the OEL Foundation remains one of the best projects to look out for and invest in the near future.

How does The OEL Foundation work?

Making up the core of the OEL Foundation’s Enterprise Architecture are three key layers:

The OEL Platform

The OEL Protocol

The OEL Network

The self-explanatory OEL Platform, which includes things like dashboards and business intelligence tools among a list of components, is where the majority of interactions with users and clients would occur.

The OEL Protocol and Network, on the other hand, are the technical things going on behind the scenes for the ecosystem to perform its functions and interact with other applications and systems.

As the ecosystem will be implemented in a variety of use cases, standards would have to be followed which is exactly what the OEL Foundation team has done. In this case, the OEL Foundation abides to the two major industry standards in the blockchain industry, the Enterprise Ethereum Architecture Framework, and the OnChain Distributed Networks Architecture as well as observing other industry standards whenever possible.

To ensure that the ecosystem is viable in today’s rapid economy, the platform is built in such a way that transactions are verified quickly at low costs; it is also built to scale and adapt to client demands effectively which spells good news for busy businesses.

As mentioned earlier, the OEL Foundation promises to maintain high levels of transparency and accountability—a statement that is proven by the open-source nature of the platform as well as the team’s constant communication and updates through their social media platforms.

Security and privacy is not a problem in the ecosystem as the OEL Foundation complies with industry standards and best practices to ensure that users have full control over their personal data in addition to protecting the data as much as possible.

The OEL Foundation will also introduce a rewards-based model where users are rewarded in OPN Tokens (the platform’s official utility token) for sharing their supply chain data, a move that incentivizes participants fairly for their positive contributions to the platform.

The OEL Foundation Alliance

The OEL Foundation Alliance, an alliance made up of stakeholders in the supply chain industry, is a vital component of the ecosystem responsible for shaping the OEL Enterprise Architecture with a goal of making blockchain applications usable in real-world situations. While it may sound closed off, the OEL Foundation Alliance is made to be as accessible as possible to all users instead of limiting it only to exclusive members.

The Alliance is made up of three membership tiers: General Members, Premium Members, and Enterprise Council Members. Each tier will have access to specific tier-based features and these tiers will be assigned to participants depending on their needs and potential contribution to the ecosystem.

The OEL Foundation token sale

The OEL Foundation will be holding a token sale for the OPN Token, the ecosystem’s official utility token.

Here are the details of the token sale:

Token name: OPN

Token base: ERC-20

Maximum token supply: 100,000,000

Token sale duration: Q3 2018 (Phase 1) | Q2/Q3 2019 (Phase 2)

Token sale target: $4,000,000 (soft cap) | $15,000,000 (hard cap)

Token exchange rate: $0.50 = 1 OPN

OEL Foundation’s Website

OEL Foundation’s Whitepaper