With President Donald Trump’s latest tariffs announced today, the day he calls “liberation day” – Web3 startups believe they can use their blockchain platform to automatically track tariffs on goods coming and going to the United States. This claim can be bold and is typical of many such bold claims made by other Web3 startups. However, there may be more than just eye contact, as WATR’s platforms are already being used to verify products by large mining companies and automakers.
Created by former Shell, BP and JP Morgan executives, the company is led by Mariam Ayati, who leads global origination and investments at Shell Trading, so she needs to know what she’s talking about. WATR counts investors from FAR’s unnamed crypto VC and commodity executive syndicates like this, but we’ve seen evidence suggesting that TechCrunch already has millions of dollars of support.
Ayati said over the phone: “We can quickly scale the reported data to the data sold on machines from countless satellites, sensors and open source repositories. This is to see where the product came from. For example, was it transferred from another ship in the ocean?”
An example of a potential player’s ears says it’s a place where you can pre-check items for a fee before a deal is made.
“Some non-Western governments we spoke to may argue that Western goods traders sometimes claim that the goods they purchase go to Europe, but they are sent to, say, Asian markets,” she said. “And they don’t give the original product owner the right cuts, so they make more money on it. With our system, micro-duty is due, even before the money changes hands.
Perhaps the claim is music to Trump’s ears, but it certainly could potentially be hit by global trade due to tariff-induced slowdowns. The global commodity industry is already worth $20 trillion, so the interests are clearly high.
WATR’s platform uses blockchain-based tools to track products. It employs everything from the distributed ID of the institution to digital fingerprinting of raw materials.
According to Ayati, the goal is to modernize plumbing in the global economy. “This is not a token hype,” she said. “It’s about changing how trust, traceability and liquidity work in the real world.”
In 2022, WATR began with a “nutrition label,” which tracks the source of products in terms of regulatory aspects such as CO2 emissions and other ESG considerations.
However, as ESG is no longer preferred, they are switching to sanctions and tariffs to test the source of products using blockchain platforms to ensure that clients have not accidentally stepped over regulatory hurdles before transactions take place.
WATR announced this week its transition to an avalanche blockchain network. Avalanche is a blockchain developed by AVA Labs, which allows companies such as WATR to create so-called “sovereign chains.” This is tailored to the needs of a particular industry, in this case the world of the product. Already used by JP Morgan, Citibank and FEMA.
Certainly, this is not the first time that blockchain has been pitched as a fix for commodity transactions.
In the US, The Seam, an agriculture-centric digital exchange, partnered with IBM in 2017 to investigate blockchain-based cotton transactions, targeting the transparency and accountability of the agricultural supply chain.
Then, in 2018, a group of industry giants, including ING, Shell and ABN Amro, supported the Komgo Initiative, a blockchain-based platform aimed at streamlining trade funds for goods. The goal was to reduce fraud and delays by digitizing key documents such as letters of credit and KYC records. Coincidentally, Ayati was also part of that initiative.
But outside of WATR, many of these previous projects have fallen on the roadside.
Comment, Independent Web3 VC Keld van Schreven is the founding partner of KR1 and tells TechCrunch that Watr’s plans need to be tested in the market. Trade. “
He added that the move to avalanche blockchain “indicates what we’re thinking about scalability from the start.” It says this is, as before, an industry adoption that goes beyond the volume of actual transactions and early pilot stages.
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