AgriDex selects L3COS and tokenisation for $9 trillion global food and agriculture marketplace
Global food and agriculture industry supply chain platform AgriDex has selected L3COS to create its blockchain-based transparent marketplace.
In an $85 million contract, London-based L3COS will deliver the tokenised payments and exchange platform for AgriDex, whose users’ supply chains are valued at approximately $2.25 trillion annually.
When the L3COS-based AgriDex platform goes live at the end of 2021, more than 150 companies will be able to use AgriDex to create more efficient supply chains via an ultra-secure, fully compliant, smart marketplace.
The World Bank currently values the global food and agriculture market at more than $9 trillion annually.
AgriDex’s Software as a Service (SaaS) platform aims to solve the issues which have held the commercialisation of blockchain technology back by offering low latency, scalability, permissioned regulation and personal privacy. The system claims to be able to handle 1.5 million simultaneous transactions per second, providing the capacity and resilience that industries such as agriculture and food production need.
It improves global food security by connecting buyers and sellers and creating greater certainty and quicker payment for all entities in global food production. Every participant goes through extensive ‘Know Your Client’ (KYC) protocols and the trades between them are captured in automated smart contracts, giving greater assurance and predictability of payment.
For consumers, the software will mean greater certainty as the smart and end-to-end nature of its blockchain means full provenance of the entire food growing, processing and logistics processes.
Starting point
Zurab Ashvil, L3COS CEO, said the platform had potential to digitise industries across many spectrums, and the agriculture marketplace was an ideal starting point to showcase its applications.
“AgriDex has a vision to help the global population with support from an industry that is fundamental to the world’s wellbeing,” he said.
“When we first started to design our solution eight years ago, we wanted to combine the best of the world we already had with the full benefits of digitalisation.
“Over the past 8 years, we have invested over $65 million and worked with more than 1,200 programmers to create a PaaS solution that entire industries can adopt with confidence – L3COS is the first operating system for the DLT (Digital Ledger Technology) world.”
Payments on the marketplace are made efficient by using AgriDex’s fungible AGR token, which is accessed through the L3COS exchange.
Tokenisation becomes especially powerful in a sector reliant on cross border flows of food, crops, capital equipment, services and consumable products.
The AGR token is a stablecoin pegged to sterling, therefore reducing currency fluctuation risk and associated hedging costs. The capital that underpins the AGR token will be held by Tier 1 custodians based in the UK.
As L3COS is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, it allows governments, organisations – like AgriDex – businesses and individuals to build and run applications on its operating system.
Svetlana Fialova – a Partner at AgriDex – said she hoped the platform would go on to solve many of the problems that hinder the food production industry.
“Our vision for AgriDex is that it will be the one platform to meet all the needs of the various businesses in the agricultural and food production industry worldwide,” she said.
New economy
“We are creating a new economy that is based on mutual trust and that acknowledges the value of every participant in this vast system.
“Importantly, we also recognise the increasing consumer need for food chain transparency, access to which will give our customers a much-needed competitive advantage. As the world is coming to recognise the value of preserving our environment and ecosystems, the importance of a coordinated response becomes ever more important.”
Her sentiments were echoed by Martin Graham, CEO of the L3COS exchange.
“L3COS solution delivers the frictionless, ultra-low cost and instant connection between all of the entities involved in the agriculture and food industry,” he said.
“We have taken the time required to build an exchange grade platform capable of hosting all the transactions in a multi trillion-dollar industry.
“No similar platform can deliver real world high-frequency trading – with a capacity of 1.5 million simultaneous transactions per second. AgriDex users can be assured that they have a supply-chain and payments platform that delivers unprecedented performance.”
L3COS is based in London and has a management team of tech and finance entrepreneurs, such as Founder and CEO Zurab Ashvil who was previously head of technology at Softbank in New York. He leads with security and government expert Sir Mark Lyall Grant – the former UK National Security Advisor – and financial infrastructure specialist Martin Graham, former Director of Markets and Chairman of AIM at the London Stock Exchange.