With a team of friends and dedicated business partners, we started working on aXedras in early 2018. Initially, we completed a thorough proof-of-concept and strategy finetuning phase. Then, in December of 2018, we founded the company. Today, aXedras Group is rapidly heading towards becoming a global digital standard for high-value assets. Here’s an update on where we stand.

Founded in December of 2018, aXedras has realized the business objectives of its start-up phase. The company has successfully developed and launched a DLT-based technology platform for the precious metals industry.

A pilot ecosystem with key industry players is in operation. The business model has proven to be viable and solid, it is welcomed by the industry, and it is picking up momentum. Therefore, it is now time to scale the business vertically, horizontally, and globally.

Vision, Mission, Strategy

The vision of aXedras is to be the worldwide KYA (Know-Your-Asset) digital technology standard and leader for the global precious metals industry and other high-value physical asset industries, such as art and fine wines.

Our mission is to employ blockchain technology and data standardization to integrate and digitize high-value physical asset industries, thus creating benefits in terms of efficiency, digital innovation, product integrity and provenance transparency.

We are pursuing a three-step strategy:

1. Offer and continuously improve a holistic and vertically integrated solution (the Bullion Integrity Ledger™) for the precious metals industry.
2. Build, buy and/or interface with vertical and adjacent technology for further ecosystem progress and innovation.
3. Horizontally replicate the technology and experience into other industries with similar development opportunities.

The Bullion Integrity Ledger™

The product aXedras has built for the precious metals industry is called the Bullion Integrity Ledger™ (BIL). It is a neutral technology platform, made in and operated from Switzerland, that efficiently and effectively connects the stakeholders of the global precious metal industry.

The precious metals industry faces serious challenges and pain points such as reputational risks, heavy regulatory requirements, stark supply chain inefficiencies, and intransparency. The BIL provides a digital standard and protocol by creating a “digital twin” (the Integrity Certificate) of each physical precious metal product and effectively connecting all the market participants.

It thereby lays the groundwork for a trusted, transparent, efficient, and self-reinforcing network of product integrity and responsible sourcing.

The primary benefits of the BIL are (1) improved process efficiency, (2) product integrity, and (3) responsible sourcing transparency, combined with (4) confidentiality and (5) new opportunities for product and service innovations.

Opportunity

Switzerland is the ideal hub for the business of aXedras. It is an important center in the global precious metals industry.

Roughly 40-60% of global refining and recycling is performed by Swiss refiners. Moreover, the regulatory, political, and economic stability, combined with the talent and capital concentrated in the Crypto Valley and Swiss financial market make for an ideal place to build the business in.

Focused on working with key players in Switzerland, a technology-enabled Swiss Bullion Integrity Framework is evolving with the support of aXedras.

After its successful launch, aXedras has the only DLT-based industry solution in operation that has accomplished true market traction and a relevant client base in the precious metals industry from upstream to downstream.

Looking forward, aXedras’ goals for 2021 and 2022 include strongly growing the number of participants in the ecosystem, onboarding key vertical stakeholders such as mines and bullion banks, and rolling out new modules to meet important user requests.

With the launch of the Bullion Integrity Ledger™, aXedras has achieved a critical first-mover advantage. At this point, we can confidently expect that the majority of the volume in the precious metal market will be maintained and flow through the Bullion Integrity Ledger™, creating an unrivaled position for services.

The Problem

The precious metals industry faces several challenges that need to be addressed – ideally, in a coordinated and pro-active manner.

In the precious metals industry, trust between participants and confidence in the integrity of the products have traditionally been based on established networks and personal relationships.

But this is no longer sufficient. With the rising importance of sustainability and human rights issues, and the regulatory and operational challenges that come with it, the industry participants are often required to demonstrate the integrity and provenance of the physical product.

However, the paper-based and largely manual nature of the industry’s documentation processes means that proving provenance is difficult, slow, and expensive.

Increasingly, compliance and regulatory requirements are adding to the cost of running a business in the precious metals industry. This applies to all firms across the value chain. Moreover, due to the lack of broad and global inter-company standards for data exchange, the industry finds it difficult to achieve inter-company processing and data-sharing efficiencies.

This of course leads to incomplete product provenance and integrity resulting in fragmented inter-party data exchange and a lack of transparency and reliable market information.

There is a pressing need to automate and digitize processes and proof of origin and provenance across the value chain, while enabling all participants to share a single version of the truth, an accepted data standard, in a seamless and confidential way.

The Solution

Boosting product integrity and compliance operations, while reducing transaction times, manual processes, and reconciliation, the BIL also maintains the critical element of strict confidentiality.

aXedras combines sound and deep bullion market expertise and cutting-edge technology to equally benefit the stakeholders of the precious metal industry. The Bullion Integrity Ledger™ connects its members in a peer-to-peer manner and ensures seamless, secure, and confidential interaction, as data sovereignty remains with the network members.

In essence, the BIL is a digital registry for product certificates. Two types of certificates are digitally registered and administered on the BIL:

1. (The Integrity Certificate (IC), which acts as digital twin of the physical bullion products produced by refiners and mints.
2. The Provenance Certificate (PC), which acts as the digital representation of sourcing material to refiners and mints. The PC information is integrated and accessible from the IC of each bullion product.

The Integrity and Provenance Certificates digitally replace the multitude of paper documents that have traditionally been passed between different parties and provide unique digital identities throughout the life cycle of precious metals products.

They identify the exact attributes of each product — miner, refiner, brand, fineness, weight, quality, chain of custody, history, provenance and so on — along with other unique digital identifiers including unique aXedras codes.

By establishing the Bullion Integrity Ledger™ as an accepted data standard and automated platform at the center of the industry, a circle of trust was created, and an ecosystem of technology enabled efficiency and innovation has evolved.

Where paper processes and contractually trusted network partners represented the framework of cooperation in the past, the Bullion Integrity Ledger™ now affords a digital standard, an automated registry platform for the core processes of the physical bullion products market.

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